A Voice Across the Void
by Zoltan Berrigomo
Summary: A padawan comes across an ancient Sith holocron during an archaeological field trip and keeps the discovery secret from his masters.
1. A holocron is not alive

**1.**

There it was, the thing they had all been searching for: a small, ebony pyramid nestled in the heap of moss and pine cones. Strange that the masters had missed it when Noval noticed it the moment he stepped into the glade, the bright rays of reflected sunlight coming eerily from the ground and catching his eye. How beautiful, he thought as he knelt beside it, a voice across the void of time, long-forgotten mysteries lurking beneath the surface, just lying there reflecting the sun's glare on a warm summer afternoon.

He reached out and slid the holocron into the folds of his robe.

He could not help feeling some pride at being the first to discover something of value, especially given that the rest of the initiates have been scouring the ancient ruins for weeks without finding anything of interest. Should he inform the masters? He stood indecisive, knowing that if he did the artifact would be destroyed. The holocron felt cold and damp against his skin and he had to resist the sudden urge to shiver.

"There is little point in standing there, initiate," he heard the voice of Master Pavarr coming faintly behind him. He turned quickly to see the master sitting cross-legged at the far end of the glade, eyes closed in a meditative stance. "We have thoroughly examined the forest around this clearing. You would do better to conduct your searches elsewhere."

"As you say, master," he replied (a little too eagerly?) taking care to set himself in motion. He wandered haphazardly through the forest until he was sure to be out of sight. When he pulled it out of his robe, the holocron felt icy to the touch and seemed to almost buzz in his hands yet he was certain the object neither moved nor made noise.

**2.**

"Shouldn't we hesitate before taking a life?"

He interrupted master Shayn's lesson that morning partly out of conviction and partly out of boredom. The students were sprawled out on blankets at the top of small hill, notebooks in front of them, and the air was full of the pleasant sounds of quills writing on parchment. The lesson was a dull one, largely consisting of a rote recitation of the factions which ruled this planet as galactic politics twisted and turned over the course of millenia. The master had just started to explain the necessity of destroying relics left behind by the Sith during their occupation when Noval interrupted.

"A holocron is not alive," master Shayn replied. Noval had been in the academy long enough to detect the hint of impatience buried deep within the outwardly tranquil voice. "It is merely an imprint of a mind, an echo. The Sith who created them have been dead for centuries. They are dangerous artifacts and if left here they will, in time, shepherd someone to the dark side."

The wise thing to do would be to nod and offer a polite thanks for the dispensation of wisdom. Noval had so far received no offers of tutelage from any of the masters and time was running short. Each day he heard news of another student paired up with a master while he remained unapproached. The end of the academic year was close, a matter of weeks now, and if he did not receive an offer by then he would be politely asked to leave the order.

A reputation for being stubborn was unlikely to help matters.

"But master," he went on nonetheless, "it is well-known that when these - echoes you call them - when they speak, they say the same sorts of things as other sentients. I've heard it said holocrons will speak of thoughts, intentions, desires, even love."

Noval paused. Most of the other pupils were looking at him uncertainly.

"I can't say what it means to be alive, but shouldn't we begin with the assumption that holocrons deserve the protections we give to sentient beings - at least until proven otherwise?"

The master seemed unimpressed. "All living things are part of the force," he said unhurriedly. "Initiate, do not forget that you but a novice in the Jedi way. Should you become a full-fledged Jedi one day, you will know what it means to feel the resonance of a living being in the force. I assure you holocrons have none of that."

Noval's reply was hot on his tongue but master Shayn turned away and proceeded with the lecture.

**3.**

He had little trouble wandering away the next day. Meditations by the masters revealed no imminent dangers, no dangerous plots awaiting them, and the students were only loosely supervised during their class trip. Technically, he was supposed to report to his assigned dig site and await instructions; but the masters were largely absorbed in the search efforts and took little notice of absences among the students.

He found a small clearing away from the ruined temples which were the focus of the masters' attention and spent a few hours sitting in front of it. There was an eerie beauty about it that was almost enthralling. How could he summon whatever lurked beneath the surface? Any questions to the masters would arouse suspicion. He tried focusing all the energy he could muster on the little pyramid, nearly sapping the force currents which swirled around the forest. Yet nothing happened and it only seemed to shimmer in his hands indifferently.

He began to doubt himself on the long walk back to the Jedi camp. Perhaps it was best to turn the thing over to the masters after all? What if the holocron was a Sith creation? Noval had little fear that he would be turned to the dark side, that the lure of power would somehow cause him to sacrifice all he held dear. The very idea was preposterous. And yet, all the same, who knew what havoc a Sith holocron might unleash?

There was something else besides, something lurking within the recesses of his mind which he could not put into words. The holocron came from this planet, and ever since he had set foot here he could not help feeling there was something awry, something indefinably wrong about it. The forest which covered the surface felt uncanny and sinister. The thick, ancient trees seemed to breathe out a quiet rage and the canopy of their branches might have been made from dens of snakes. An undertone of energy seemed to pulsate through the air. It was not like the energy Noval sensed in the sacred placed of the Jedi, which seemed to envelop him in soothing warmth; the energy here had a manic undertone to it, its oscillations always in motion and seeming to bore into into him. He sometimes felt as if he was on the verge of suffocating and had to put his hands on his knees and breathe deeply until the feeling passed.

But none of the other students mentioned anything of the sort and Noval wondered if he was imagining things. In any case, asking the masters about it would be unlikely to bode well for his future. He felt himself on thin ice as things were, and so he kept his silence as if nothing was amiss.

**4.**

He didn't do well at lightsaber practice that afternoon.

For years now he had been unable to seriously challenge anyone from his own cohort of students and had been sparring with pupils who entered a year or two after him. He sometimes thought with longing to his earliest days in the academy, when the initiates were first given their practice sabers, all of them barely able to contain their joy, and when they tested themselves in the fighting ring none seemed any better than the rest.

But years of training showed he simply wasn't very good with the saber. Perhaps his reflexes weren't fast enough or perhaps he simply lacked the requisite coordination. Compared to his classmates his performance seemed to be getting worse with each passing day. No wonder - most of the students practiced day and night, sometimes sneaking into the arenas of the academy when no one was looking, sometimes hacking at each other with sticks during their free time; but Noval always tried to spend as little time in the fighting ring as possible. The Jedi emphasis on the lightsaber seemed like a pathology to him, a strange harkening to archaic times when hand-to-hand combat was what mattered, ill-fitting now in an age of spaceships and explosives.

He preferred to focus his efforts elsewhere. He was good at force sensing, much more so than anyone else within his cohort. Whereas his fellow students were still working on peering through walls, he was able to concentrate on a grain of sand several city blocks away, regardless of what obstacles stood between them. He could use the force to move objects, not just objects in front of him - his fellow pupils could do that - but objects far out of sight whose echoes he could faintly detect in the the way the force rippled around him.

What he had wanted most was the ability to predict the future. He had seeds of this ability when he was younger, often having dreams of events that would later come to pass. Mostly, these were events that were important to him at the time - class trips, days off, tournament standings - in hindsight, trivial things. He had, of course, told the masters but had received no guidance from them beside the instruction to immediately relay the contents of all such dreams. Far from sharing his excitement, he had the distinct sense the masters saw his ability as a portent of trouble. As he grew older, the dreams had grown rarer and rarer. He had not had one in several years.

The thought of spending hours each day practicing his lightsaber- when there were so many other things he would rather do - filled him with a quiet despair. But there was nothing to be done about it.

This afternoon he was paired up with Jann, a tall, ashen-haired boy who entered the academy a full two years after him and was one of the weakest duelists in his own class. Noval had little trouble defeating him in the past and assumed this time would be no different.

But from the outset, things did not go well; Noval began aggressively only to see his rehearsed sequence of attacks dodged with ease. The combination of thrusts and feints which served him well in matches with Jann in the past no longer seemed to be having an effect. In the split second before Jann counterattacked, Noval reflected that he should have been trying to increase his repertoire rather than relying on the same combination of practiced moves.

On defense now, he found himself hedged in, moving awkwardly to defend against Jann's charges and finding his position worsening with each blow. At last, corralled into a corner, he fell prey to a feint and struck his saber at empty air, only for Jann to knock it out of his hands.

Being disarmed was humiliating - most duels ended with a hit to the body - and the flickering look of satisfaction on Jann's face stung. Worse, the masters were watching, and though their faces betrayed no emotion he could swear the imperturbable lips of Master Pavarr arranged themselves into something resembling a frown.

He tried to slink away after practice only to be intercepted.

"Always the provocateur," Reena sighed at him. "I can never tell if you mean what you say. Do you really think that holocrons are people?"

Reena was his closest friend when he first arrived at the academy, years ago when the two of them had been wide-eyed kids astonished and bewildered by everything they saw. Joining the academy was a bittersweet experience for most, the thrill of being put on the path to becoming Jedi mixed with the pain of knowing you would likely never see your family again. But Noval was an orphan and felt only sheer joy when he arrived, whereas Reena swore an oath to her mother before she left, to find and reunite with her once she had completed her training, and the oath seemed to sustain her so that she felt none of the sadness the others had carried about them like a weight.

When the gloomy spell of the first few months at the academy had run its course, their fellow students emerged with a seriousness of purpose, a consciousness of the sacrifice they were making. They treated their Jedi teachers with veneration and they never laughed at the irreverent jokes Reena and Noval made at the expense of the masters. The two of them had felt like kindred spirits and spent the better part of each day in each other's company.

But a long time had passed since those days. Reena had grown more solemn over time, more in tune with what a Jedi was expected to be, and Noval wondered if she would keep the oath she swore to her mother, or whether, in the end, her family would be one more trial for her, one more worldly attachment to cast away on the path to masterhood.

"Well," Noval said, "I don't know - holocrons aren't people in the literal sense of the word - their nature could be somehow different. Regardless of what the masters say, though, they seem as if they could be sentient."

In truth, Noval was grateful to have an interlocutor. Few of the other students took the time to consider his beliefs seriously.

"Yes, but they only seem to be - they are not _really _alive," Reena replied in that slightly peevish tone which she seemed to reserve for him these days. "Well, I will not argue with you; a simple demonstration should suffice. Come with."

He followed behind her as they walked through the Jedi camp, giving occasional greetings to the students who were lounging beside the now-extinguished campfires used in morning meditations. When they reached her tent, she carefully extracted something small and shiny from one of the beige boxes stacked in the corner.

A holocron!

But this one glowed white, apparently made out of some kind of polished alabaster, and Noval could feel nothing from it, no plays of light, no sense of almost-movement.

"My grandfather," Reena said by way of explanation. "Or, rather, what remains of him. He made this when he was close to death. I'll unlock it now."

"How?" Noval said, a little too quickly.

She looked at him with incomprehension.

"I meant to ask - how does one unlock a holocron?"

"I simply think of him - I mean my grandfather - while focusing force on the holocron. It won't take more than a moment."

"What if I did it?"

"What do you mean?"

"Suppose I focused on the holocron," Noval said, "thinking of your grandfather. What would happen?"

"To be honest, I'm not sure," Reena said thoughtfully. "From my what I understand, nothing will happen unless my grandfather desires to appear, which he probably will not if he senses you in front of him. But I think most holocrons are usually a little less selective in who they agree converse with..."

"Anyway," she said eyeing him curiously, "why do you ask?"

"No particular reason - just trying to understand how these things work. Anyway, go ahead."

She looked at him skeptically before turning away and closing her eyes in focus. He took the opportunity to cast an unhurried glance in her direction, and, as always, was starstruck by her simple looks which seemed to radiate thoughtfulness. There was something about her face, some magnetism that made him steal glances when she wasn't looking, something that made him feel as if he could stare at her for a very long time.

Rays of light began to pour out of the holocron.

"Welcome, honored elder," Reena intoned. "May the days of your life be as many as the autumn raindrops."

"Greetings, child." The rays of light had coalesced into a small figure and a voice as light as a wisp. "May your path be straight as an arrow, and just as sharp."

He squinted.

"Where are we, child? I see trees."

"Planet Nar Mantell, grandfather. We are on a field trip searching for artifacts in the ancient temples here. Grandfather, there is someone here who has a few questions for you. This is Noval."

The image of the old man turned to look at Noval.

"He is extremely interested in holocrons, grandfather. I thought you might answer some of his questions."

The old man chuckled.

"Why not? I have always been more than happy to play my part in the education of youth."

"Well, grandfather, we were wondering - are you alive?"

This seemed to bring forth more chuckles.

"What a question! No, child, I am not alive. The real me died some decades ago. I am only a record of the person who once was."

Reena looked at him with a raised eyebrow.

"Honored elder," Noval began, "I wonder if I could ask whether you still feel the same sensations you did when you were alive - pain? pleasure? hunger?"

"I no longer feel any of the primal instincts," the old man seemed to be smiling as he spoke, "no hunger. There is nothing that could cause me to feel physical pain. But I do take pleasure in things. It gives me great pleasure, for example, to see my grand-daughter take her first steps to become a Jedi."

"It must be odd to have no physical sensations."

The old man nodded.

"I remember thinking that myself when I first woke up in here, ages ago. Now I am so used to it I can barely remember what it felt like before."

"It was very strange," the old man went on, "to be without the rhythms of life, the cycles of morning and evening, sleep and wakefulness, night and day. The monotony was unbearable at first. But over time I've grown to like it. It feels reassuring to have a mind that does not waver."

"What is it like," Noval asked, "between the times you talk to someone? Do you sense the time passing?"

"It is as if I'm in a dream. Images from my life wash over me."

"What sort of images, if I may ask?"

The old man paused.

"Memories of those moments of my life that mattered. Seeing my wife for the very first time, for example. We were both initiates at the academy then. Her funeral, decades later, me standing beside the casket as it was lowered deep into the earth."

His face become more impassive.

"She became a Jedi, you know, and I did not. I think a lot of our first kiss."

He smiled once again, now with some embarrassment.

"Is that what you wanted to know? If I seem to be rambling, do not hesitate to interrupt."

"I would be very glad to hear more, honored elder," Noval said.

The old man kept smiling, seemingly lost in some private reverie.

"I was proud of my wife, you know, of her role in putting in an end to the disorders convulsing the galaxy. And she gave me Reena's mother, the apple of my eye."

"You must miss her in there," Noval said, and as soon as the words were out of his mouth he wondered if it was cruel to be probing like this.

The old man nodded slowly.

"Very much. And yet her life, as well as her death, served a purpose. I envy her that."

"How long have you been apart?"

"Who can say?" The old man replied with some consternation. "Sometimes it feels as if little more than a moment had passed. Other times it seems as if I have been in here for ages. My sense of the passage of time is a little hazy, to tell the truth."

He paused, and a look of determination crept into his face.

"But I do remember her, that is the important thing. And she will always exist as long as I remember her, because I know who she was and what she fought for. As long as I am here, she is not erased from the record of life."

"These don't seem like altogether pleasant thoughts you are having in there," Noval said.

He meant it as a bit of a joke, an attempt to lighten what was turning out to be an uneasy conversation, but the old man took him seriously.

"You will learn one day that life is about more than seeking out pleasure, if you have not learned it already."

Noval bowed. It felt like the only appropriate response to make now. He could not think of anything more to ask.

"Thank you for your insights, honored elder."

The old man nodded, wishing them peace, and the holocron flickered off until it stood motionless in Reena's hands.

"Well," she said, looking up at him, "as to being alive, he said it himself, plain as day."

Noval didn't reply - he scrunched his face and looked over her shoulder as if he were glancing at something very far away - and after a moment she continued.

"I know it sounds as if he could be human at times, but try to imagine an existence with no sensations - no physical pain or pleasure - nothing but thoughts. It has more in common with being a navcomputer than it does with being alive."

"Maybe," Noval said, turning his attention back to her. "I'd say he was more alive than half the masters I've met."

**5.**

So he had to make whatever was inside the holocron want to appear. But how to do that? He found some empty space on the outskirts of the forest and once again spent an afternoon focusing the force on it until his abilities were strained to their limits, all with no apparent effect. Walking back to the Jedi camp at dusk, disheartened and exhausted, he began to wonder why he was so intent on unlocking it in the first place. Why not simply turn the blasted thing over to the masters and be done with it?

Maybe he stubbornly believed that holocrons could be alive and did not wish to see a living sentient destroyed. But even if the holocron was not alive, it still wasn't right to dismantle it. Imagine everything that could be learned from it, he thought, all the knowledge that could be obtained from talking to a being who lived countless ages before our time.

Noval always had an attraction to the repositories of knowledge, the old tomes of wisdom passed down from ancient times, the faded scrolls with barely legible ink on parchment, the ancient temples and ruins with their mysterious inscriptions. They were more than just relics, they were a part of a story, a story about a galaxy made up of countless species and planets convulsing over millenia, jumping from conflict to peace to conflict, culminating in the present orderly but admittedly imperfect state of affairs. It was the story that gave things meaning. What sense was there in his life, in his efforts to become a Jedi, except when thought of as part of a quest spanning many thousands of years to bring peace to the galaxy?

The thought of finding a missing chapter in the story of the world filled him with a pleasure he could not explain. He kept turning the holocron over in his hands, daydreaming about the secrets it might hold. But several hours spent in such reflections produced no changes in the holocron.

**6.**

His performance at battle practice took a turn for the worse the following day. After another painful loss to Jann, the masters paired him up with a student who joined the order a full three years after himself, a determined and slightly impish-looking boy who stood a head shorter than Noval. Determined to redeem himself, Noval threw all his concentration into the battle, furiously attacking his opponent with all the energy he could muster.

They seemed evenly matched for a few minutes until a thoughtless misstep on Noval's part left his left flank open and allowed his opponent to seize the initiative. Noval struggled to dodge the sequence of attacks thrown at him, and, a minute later, feeling exhausted and seeing himself backed into a corner, gambled on a bold and, so he thought, unexpected lunge, only for his lightsaber to be knocked away by the parry.

Disarmed again. Standing out of breath and defenseless, he wondered how many more such humiliations he would have to endure, how long until he could finally fight his last saber battle. When he would, at last, become a Jedi knight, his saber would be there for ceremonial purposes, nothing more. Although the stories of the Jedi abounded with tales of hand-to-hand combat, he was sure such battles signaled nothing more than an inability to properly anticipate events, a mistake he would not make.

He was called into master Shayn's tent that evening. A droid brought the politely phrased request to seek out the masters at his earliest convenience and he walked over with a sinking heart. Had someone noticed the holocron under the folds of his robe? What could he say to explain why he had kept it secret?

He strode slowly through the camp, eyeing warily the initiates he saw idling beside the tents and wondering if any of them had discovered his secret. Was he sighted during one of his trips into the forest when he imagined himself alone? In any case, it did not matter now. He turned over various excuses in his head, none of them satisfactory.

Entering the tent, he found both Shayn and Pavarr conferring in low tones. He waited patiently at the entrance, watching as they talked and cast occasional glances in his direction. He had not been in here before, and taking a quick long look, he saw it was a sparse and unassuming dwelling as befits a Jedi master: desk, meditation mat, a few books strewn about, and little else to catch the eye.

Finally they motioned him to come closer.

"As you well-know," master Shayn began after a pause, "not all students are chosen to become Jedi knights. Many serve the Republic in other capacities, insofar as they are able."

He stopped, seeming to await some sort of reply from Noval.

"Indeed, master, this is known to me."

"We believe it unlikely that you will be selected for further advancement," Shayn continued. "We have made inquiries to all the masters that know of you. None have expressed an interest in taking you on as a padawan."

Noval caught his breath. This news hit him like a cold gust of wind in the face. He said nothing for a few moments, desperately trying to steady his thoughts. When he was certain his voice would not quiver, he said, "May I ask why, masters?"

"It is thought that you do not have the temperament to be a Jedi," Pavarr stepped in. "Jedi must know how to defer to the wisdom of others. I myself regularly defer to the directives of the Jedi council. The council itself defers to the teachings of our order, which have been honed over millenia of practice."

"A Jedi prone to take matters into his own hands is a dangerous thing indeed. I cannot take the responsibility of educating such a student."

"Our path is not easy," Shayn added, "it requires forbearance and patience. There is danger of yielding to the dark side."

He paused as if to let Noval work out the implications of his words. After a few moments of silence, he continued.

"The prevailing consensus is that you are too headstrong. Too attached to your opinions. Argumentative. Unwilling or unable to defer to the wisdom of your superiors. These are traits that lead to the dark side."

"You may attempt to find a master who thinks differently," Pavarr took over again, "that is, of course, your prerogative. Rest assured, we will do our utmost to aid you; for the moment, you remain a student under our tutelage. But I must advise you that such efforts are unlikely to bear fruit."

There was something almost clinical about Pavarr's way of speaking, as if he was delivering fatal news at a patient's bedside.

"There are indeed many Jedi masters who have not interacted with you," Pavarr went on, "and some of them occasionally visit Dantooine to see if any of our initiates are promising candidates for further tutelage. I believe we have such a group of visitors arriving soon after our return to the academy. But they usually pick students based on proficiency with the saber, and in that area, I am afraid, you are not very advanced."

Noval stood in silence, too many thoughts seeming to race through his head at once. He had enough experience with Shayn and Pavarr over the years that know that once their minds were made up, attempts at persuasion were futile.

"Thank you, masters," he said finally, having collected himself. "I appreciate the advance notice you have given me."

Shayn and Pavarr shared a quick glance.

"We are pleased to see you take the news with the equanimity of a true Jedi," Shayn said. "We expected nothing less."

He reached over to the desk behind him and picked up a bulging brownish folder stuffed with papers.

"There are a number of agencies within the Republic that have historically been keen to employ our former students. Do take a look at the references we have put together for you."

Noval took the folder, bowing slightly in thanks, and turned to exit the tent.

**7.**

"In many ways," Pavarr said when they were alone again, "he is one of our best students."

Shayn sighed to himself. It was an irksome habit his friend had, to revisit each decision after it was made, to rehash the arguments that had been discussed again and again.

"Indeed," he replied. As always, he would humor his friend.

"His saber skills nonwithstanding," Pavarr continued, "he is quite adept in the force."

It was Pavarr's way of assuring himself that he did not making a mistake, to play the devil's advocate. Now it would be up to Shayn to persuade him, which he would by repeating the very same arguments that proved decisive not less than an hour ago.

"He is full of longing and desire," Shayn said.

Pavarr nodded, as if acknowledging a point has been scored.

"We _cannot_ mold him," Shayn said. "He honors our authority for the time being but he does not accept it in his heart."

Pavarr nodded again.

"He does have some talents. One of us could take him on or we might pass along a strongly worded recommendation. But what if the Sith arise in the galaxy again? Can we be certain he will not by seduced by their whispers?"

They had made the right decision, Shayn said to himself, smothering away any doubt that remained within him. It was too easy to see himself in Noval, to be reminded of the person he used to be. He had once been on the verge of being expelled from the order himself, long ago when one of the masters caught sight of him kissing another initiate in the temple gardens.

It was all so perfectly innocent. Her name was Amaeda and they were both young and quite in love with each other - or so they told themselves. The masters had given them a stern lecture about the Jedi rules on attachments and ordered them to break it off or leave the order. Amaeda, hotheaded as she was sometimes wont to be, refused to back down; standing in front of the academy council, she accused the masters of heartlessness and malice before storming off. He joined her, only to reconsider the very same night as he lay awake and visions of his dreary life-to-be flashed before him. He went back to the masters with apologies on the following day.

She had not taken it well. Words of anger burned on her lips: he still remembered some of the names she called him. He thought she would come back to the order as well but to his surprise she did not. Declaring that she wanted nothing to do with the Jedi, she took the next shuttle to her homeworld.

Years later, he had come to understand that it was all a test for him, and that he had passed. Likely the masters had known of their secret dalliance for some time; and it would have been obvious to all involved that Amaeda was too passionate and quick-tempered to become a Jedi. Her fate was set in stone from the start; it was only his future that had been decided.

Strangely enough, he met her for the first time since not two months ago. He was surprised to learn that she had become a senator in the meantime, a rare honor though not entirely unexpected for someone who could draw on the force, even weakly. Engine trouble on a trip to the outer room brought her for an unscheduled stopover at Dantooine and the masters invited her to take supper alongside them. He sat a few seats across from her, making polite conversation as they all partook of a simple but pleasant meal. She glanced at him occasionally and when she did her gaze was cold and unfeeling. Not a word between the two of them was exchanged and she made no allusions to their past connection.

Like Amaeda, Noval had made his choice. He had made it a thousand times when he preferred his own wisdom to the teachings of the order, when he trusted his reason over the teachings of the Jedi masters. There was much pride in him and pride led to the dark side.

"You speak the truth, my friend," Pavarr said solemnly. "I fear this one's path lies elsewhere."

**8.**

He felt as if the floodgates within him had broken and his emotions poured forth uncontrollably. Years of hard work and all for nothing! His dreams of playing a part in the fight for justice, perhaps of being part of the generation of Jedi that finally ushers in lasting peace in the galaxy, all gone in an instant and the order tells him to find himself a job - a job! Would he spend the rest of his days writing reports and getting pleasantly drunk with coworkers at the local cantina?

He found himself walking as fast as his legs could take him and soon he was deep inside the ancient forest. It didn't seem as menacing as it did at first and he found the disorderly web of branches mirrored the disquiet within his own soul. The pulsating energy passed through him and sharpened the edges of his thoughts, which seemed to bounce around in his mind like lightning. He wondered once again if he was imagining things, and the thought struck him that it mattered little now, for without anyone to train him he would never be able to probe into the mysteries of such things.

To think of all the evenings he spent memorizing the mystical gibberish of the order, the days wasted trying to get a glimpse of what the old masters meant by their cryptic remarks. The number of times he held his tongue and dutifully accepted a rebuke.

What now? He could try to impress the masters visiting the academy by entering a saber tournament, but it was pointless, he could not make up for years of neglect within weeks. Damn the Jedi and their closed-mindedness, he thought bitterly, damn their senseless obsession with hand-to-hand combat.

There was something deeply wrong the order, something rotten to the core. It was - and the thought struck him so clearly now that he could not believe it hadn't occurred to him before - it was a failed order. The Jedi were the peacekeepers but there was no peace, the galaxy was always convulsing in war after war, more often than not led by former Jedi.

Deference, he remembered suddenly the words of Master Pavarr, it was the ability to defer that he lacked. Perhaps if there was a little less of that, perhaps if the council deferred less to the old teachings and experimented more with new ideas, the order might be more successful at its mission.

Maybe it was for the best, he thought, for now he could stop pretending that he wasn't human. The order trained him to suppress his emotions but it was those emotions that made him what he was. "Peace is a lie, there is only passion." He could not recall where he heard the phrase, but it popped into his mind now and the words felt right on his tongue. His feelings were a part of who he was and any peace achieved at their expense was not worth having.

All of a sudden, he gasped with pain. Something was burning, something scalding pressed to his leg. He tore open his robe and it rolled out of it.

The holocron.

It was blinding red now and the rays it emitted were coalescing into something.

Noval squinted. It was a woman, he realized. Short white hair, robe the color of coffee beans, a harshly sloped face, looking only a decade or two older than himself. She had an elegant sort of beauty to her that flustered him. He searched his mind for something to say to someone who hasn't been in the world for ages and came up blank.

She looked at him appraisingly for a moment and smiled.

**9.**

Noval did better at lightsaber practice the following afternoon. He won a series of quick victories against the younger students, including several against the boy who disarmed him only on the previous day. It was hard to say what, exactly, he was doing better but he appeared to be full of new energy, somehow seeming lighter in the fighting ring.

His final bout of the afternoon was against Jann. This time the duel seemed to go on interminably, the initiative changing hands several times, and it looked as if Noval might prevail. A circle of students had gathered, most of them wondering whether Noval's skill with the saber was finally improving or whether he was only having a run of good luck. Finally, Noval's made an awkward step and the split second before he righted his balance was enough for Jann to shave off a winning touch.

Noval did not seem much disappointed, bowing gracefully in thanks, his face calm as he surveyed the initiates standing around them. Master Shayn wondered if he was going through one of the stages of grief, and he was not the only one to guess something along these lines, for gossip traveled fast in the Jedi camp and there was scarcely anyone who did not know that Noval's days with the order were numbered.

Noval continued to improve in the following days. His form tightened up, his strokes became quicker, his movements more nimble. After a few days, he was making short work of Jann each time their sabers crossed: sometimes defeating him with an energetic sequence of thrusts just as the duel began, sometimes slowly wearing him down over time, and sometimes with a sequence of feints that that led Jann to thrust in wrong directions and leave himself vulnerable. He seemed to take no joy in his victories, much to the surprise of the rest of the students who had thought him impulsive and poor at self-control. It was not long before the masters began to pair him up with students from his own year.

He did not seem to be exerting himself much: no sweat ever broke his brow and no cries ever came from his lips. His movements were calm, methodical, and, in retrospect, even somewhat predictable, though none of his opponents seem to be able to predict them during the bout itself.

"How is it even possible to learn so much so quickly?" Shayn asked one day as both masters stood beside the fighting ring. Neither of them could help noticing that Noval's swordsmanship had improved by months of work from the bouts of the previous day.

"Perhaps he has had a predilection for the saber all this time," Pavarr replied uncertainly and the two of them shared a troubled glance.

They began to scrutinize Noval's fights each day. Ostensibly they behaved no different than before, walking slowly through the afternoon's saber practice and offering occasional instruction to the sparring students. But their minds were focused solely upon Noval and there was not one movement of his that they failed to sense, nor one stray thought they failed to detect. But though they kept at this for some weeks, they sensed nothing unusual, only intense concentration on his part and strong efforts to align body and mind.

They had now spent many weeks on the planet and the trip was turning out to be something of a failure. No artifacts were discovered, despite a thorough search of the ancient temples and the vegetation surrounding them. Scavengers must have stripped the planet clean over the past decades, which, in retrospect, was not entirely unexpected: there were many collectors of Sith paraphernalia throughout the galaxy and functional relics could fetch a hefty price. The council had hoped to learn something new from the ruins themselves, which might bear Sith markings or otherwise reveal something of the rituals performed within their walls, but they were much decayed and little of interest could be gleaned from them.

Although the masters were reluctant to return from their expedition empty handed, for a while it seemed as if they would have little choice. Fortunately, one of the initiates soon stumbled onto a find of some value, a collection of shards infused with dark energy, all of unknown origin and purpose. The masters surmised that these were once parts of an apparatus which played some part in the Sith rituals, but beyond that nothing could be inferred.

The shards were passed around that afternoon, each student holding one briefly and peering into it. It was a safe way to expose the pupils to the corruption of the dark side, lest any of them be one day tempted to stray. The shards were destroyed that very day, to much rejoicing round the camp, and the students spent the evening telling each other stories of the unadulterated evil they had all apparently sensed within them. The following morning, Master Shayn announced they would be packing up and returning to the academy within days. There was much acclaim all around, as the novelty of the expedition had worn off long ago and the students were all eager to get back to the comforts of Dantooine after having spent months sleeping in tents on bare ground.

By now Noval was routinely beating all the other students at camp. That morning, as Reena watched him gracefully disarm the tall, lanky boy who was the best among them only recently, she thought he might have been dancing. His motions had a continuity to them, one movement seemingly flowing into the next, all the parries, feints, and thrusts blended into a single waltz of movement.

It should not have been surprising to Noval that his preeminence in the fighting ring would translate into a rise in social status; nonetheless, he seemed to be astonished at the attention that was now directed at him. Before he was almost invisible, no one bothering to take notice of his movements about the camp; now he became a bit of a celebrity, the eyes of others always upon him, always approached for a passing attempt at conversation whenever he dallied.

One day, a group of pupils arrived at his tent with follow-up questions on whether holocrons should be considered people. They sat patiently in a circle, seemingly hanging on to his every word. Reena, who came along out of curiosity, thought he seemed disconcerted by it all. She expected him to feel a little happier to be the recipient of all the attention, especially after years of being considered unworthy of notice by most of his fellow students; and, though he smiled at times, there was also a strange undercurrent of anxiety flowing through him. Perhaps he would relax, she thought, once the question of finding a master would be resolved one way or the other.

When asked how he was able to improve his saber skills, he answered only that he had finally decided to put his mind to it. Reena put the same question to him when she caught him alone and was vexed to receive the same answer. He looked at her apprehensively, leading her to question him further, but despite her many questions he had said nothing else.

**10.**

As their ship lifted off the planet, Master Shayn's gaze settled on Noval. The shuttle was drowning in an enthusiastic buzz as the students chatted excitedly with one another. Noval sat apart, eyes closed and body taut and steady. He seemed as if he could be meditating though he was not using any of the familiar Jedi stances.

"He must have been working hard indeed," Shayn said leading over to Pavarr. "Do you suppose it will do him any good?"

"Unlikely," Pavarr scrunched his lips, "he will have to defeat the best swordsmen in the academy to get any attention. He has improved much in recent weeks but nowhere near enough."

For a time, it seemed as if the masters' prediction might come true: hours after landing on Dantooine and checking in with the academy's steward, Noval left his chambers with a small bag on his shoulders and was nowhere to be found in the following days. Master Shayn thought to himself that he would likely never see the boy again. Was he drinking down his sorrows at the local cantina? Did he use his newfound freedom to chase members of the opposite sex, as so many who left the order were wont to do? Did he join a guild of bounty hunters in search for adventure? With a sigh, the master turned his thoughts to other, weightier, matters.

But ten days hence, moments before the annual lightsaber tournament was about to commence, Noval walked into the arena of the Jedi academy and calmly wrote his name on the roster.

"I thought you had abandoned us." Master Shayn, in charge of determining the tournament pairings, stood nearby.

Noval smiled.

"Perish the thought, master."

"Where _have _you been?"

Noval made an all-encompassing gesture with one of his hands.

"This planet, master, its hills and its fields and its caves, that is where I have been. Dantooine lives, it abounds in the force, does it not?"

He smiled again before moving off to join the rest of the contestants. It was uncharacteristic behavior, Master Shayn reflected, but Noval had broken none of the academy's rules with the term winding down and classes long over.

Over the next few hours, Master Shayn witnessed an event to which he had only recently ascribed a very low probability: under the eyes of more than a hundred masters gathered in the arena, Noval defeated all his competitors, one after the other, and placed first in the tournament.

He seemed to have an uncanny ability to guess his opponent's moves. No one could say how he always seemed to be in the right place; some of the students claimed he foresaw his opponent's intentions using the force, but he was not drawing upon it more heavily than anyone else; others said he was merely good at reading footwork and tried to fool him by improvising, always unsuccessfully.

It was not merely his victory that was eye-catching but also his measured demeanor. Whereas his opponents seemed to bring a fierce determination to the matches, coupling thrusts of the saber with spikes of emotion that were instantly felt and disapproved of by the watchful masters, Noval's exterior remained calm and no outbursts were noticed coming from him. His assured appearance matched his clean and efficient saber style, which was free of the theatricality and exhibition that one often saw in tournaments at the academy. To the visiting masters who were seeing him for the first time, he appeared to be an ideal padawan.

**11.**

When Reena heard that Noval received several offers of tutelage, she stopped by his chambers offer her congratulations. She had always hoped that he would go on to become a Jedi. Even though he never quite seemed to fit in, and even though his irreverent attitude had morphed into an unpleasant bitterness as of late, somehow the Jedi order felt as if it would be less without him.

But he was nowhere to be found and his roommate told her that he had been distant as of late, leaving early in the mornings and coming back in the middle of night. Sometimes he was gone for days. She left Noval several messages with warm congratulations and requests for a celebratory meal, all unreturned.

She had received several offers of her own and was having a difficult time choosing. One of them was from Master Shayn, currently in the process of planning another expedition, this one to one of the far corners of the galaxy. The archaeological work was important but tedious, painstaking, requiring much forbearance, and she was sure it would strain her patience.

She was more inclined towards an offer from one of the order's most celebrated negotiators, master Elysar. They had gotten along instantly during their meeting. Master Elysar was startlingly informal - "Call me Cora," she had said barely after they had bowed to one another. They ended up talking for hours, and it felt less like talking to a master than to an older sister or a friend. She imagined what life would be like for an envoy's apprentice: traveling the galaxy, seeing hundreds if not thousands of worlds, shepherding along negotiations that would bring peace to the world. It was breathlessly exciting.

And that was also the problem. Reena recalled something she had heard years ago from one of the oldest and wisest masters in the academy:

"Adventure. Excitement. A Jedi craves not these things."

Was it wise to put herself into temptation's way, to let herself indulge the very impulses she should be working to excise?

She sought guidance from the masters who had taught her in the past, receiving much advice, most of it conflicting. The most common suggestion was that she should choose master Elysar - but only after curbing her impulses and expunging the emotions that would be a stumbling block for her.

One day she stayed up late into the night, unable to stop thinking about the possibilities before her. She overslept the next day, not having the strength to rise with the dawn as she usually did, and it was after some hours, late into the morning, as she drifted fitfully between sleep and wakefulness, that she heard Noval's name mentioned by someone walking past the door of her chambers.

Forcing herself to awaken, she strained her hearing.

"...hasn't talked to anyone."

"I heard he barely said a word to his roommate."

"Selfish of him not to share his secret with all of us."

"Maybe there is no secret."

"Come now, no one can become that good so quickly."

"Maybe he stumbled onto an ancient sparring technique."

"I suppose we'll never know. His shuttle departs on the hour."

Throwing on her clothes (if there was one advantage to the Jedi attire, it was that the robes did not take long to put on), she rushed to the landing pad, and there he was, shoulders hunched, looking around uncertainly as the droids carried crates onto a shuttle that was prepping for take-off. He seemed to be anxious, eyes darting aimlessly in the morning breeze, hands buried deep in his pockets.

His eyes brightened when he recognized her. She thought that she might get a stiff reception after he ignored her messages earlier, but he greeted her with a warm smile and a tight hug.

"Congratulations," she said disengaging, "I can't begin to tell you how happy I am. Which master have you chosen? Wait, I know - I'd bet anything you've picked Master Doshan."

Doshan was a scholar before he joined the ranks of the Jedi at an unusually old age and was thought to be the most cerebral of the Jedi masters. His students told stories of staying up late into the night, arguing fine points of Jedi doctrine. She heard a rumor several days ago that he had made an offer to Noval.

"In fact, I've chosen Master Nimbo," Noval replied.

Nimbo was known for his obsession with combat skills, which he prized above all else. He was often mocked by the initiates for his less than complete knowledge of Jedi practice. Several years ago one of the older students swore he heard him mangle the Jedi code, though this was mostly likely exaggeration.

"You surprise me," she said.

"I surprise myself," he said somewhat bitterly.

They stood awkwardly for a moment.

"Tell me, Reena," he said all of a sudden, "do you believe the order will bring peace to the galaxy?"

She looked at him with confusion.

"That came out of nowhere," she said. She paused for a moment. "Peace - isn't that what we are fighting for?"

"Of course it's what we are fighting for," he parried. "Do you think we will succeed?"

She considered it.

"You know, I never thought much about it." She hesitated. "Fighting for the right thing is honorable, regardless of whether one succeeds or not. That is enough for me."

"I'm not sure it's enough for me," he replied curtly. "The order has existed for thousands of years. You know the history as well as I do - the one thing the galaxy has not had is lasting peace. Do you really think we will succeed where the famous masters of old have failed?"

"When you put it that way, perhaps not." She looked intently into his eyes. "But if not this, then what? What else is there besides serving the Republic in its mission?"

"Good question," he said, meeting her gaze. The droids had ceased carrying crates and the shuttle's pilot could be heard shouting orders over the roar of the engines.

"You and I," he went on quickly, "we were always the ones with questions, weren't we? The ones no one else wanted to ask?"

She nodded. In fact, she thought, he was usually the one asking the questions no one wanted to hear, but she had at least been willing to play along.

"Maybe one day we'll have some answers." He began to say something else but it was lost in the ear-piercing rumble coming from the landing pad. He reached over and gave her a brief hug before turning to the shuttle and walking away.


	2. Sith is a title, yes

He had been sitting cross-legged on the floor of his room for the better part of an hour, both anticipating and dreading the conversation he was about to have. A palpable sense of unease had driven him to rehearse his words, again and again far beyond the point of usefulness. Finally, irritated at himself, he willed his focus upon the holocron, feeling it stir underneath the tendrils of his mind as it filled with the pulsating strength of the force. When he opened his eyes she was already standing in front of him, seemingly bemused by his efforts.

It never stopped feeling strange to have her appear like this, a conglomeration of light whose movements were accompanied by static and mechanical whirring coming from the holocron, a machine and yet undeniably human.

He cleared his throat.

"I'm sorry, but I decided I won't be calling you forth in the future. This is the last time we will speak."

The words were difficult to form in spite of the times he rehearsed them. He raised his gaze to look her in the eyes, imagining he would see a face brimming with anger. Instead, he saw eyebrows raised quizzically without emotion.

"Is that so, my padawan?"

"I am _not _your padawan," he replied quickly.

"Do not mistake me," he continued more calmly after a moment's pause, "I am grateful for everything you have done for me. But I do not want to follow down the path you lead."

He paused again.

"I promise to put you back where I found you soon enough. It will be some weeks before I can request leave from my master."

She smiled wearily.

"All my efforts to corrupt you, then, have been for nothing?"

He glared at at her.

"Very well, then, let us be serious. What will you do now? Will you become an earnest padawan for your master?"

"Yes," Noval said, "Yes, I will."

He had been mulling it over in his mind over the past weeks and had decided there was much to admire in master Nimbo. He was not the most perceptive of the Jedi, true, but his heart was noble and he was brimming with self-sacrifice. Noval should consider himself fortunate to be apprenticed with him.

"And what is it, exactly, that you imagine you will learn? How to become more proficient at waving a lightsaber?"

"That and other things," he said. "You mock, but my master has accomplished much."

"Have you learned nothing from me indeed?" her voice was one part disappointment to ten parts scorn. "If you are to truly understand, you need the contrast, not adherence to a single idea. The Jedi code does not give all the answers."

He shook his head.

"I will not be turning to the teachings of the Sith."

"The Sith is a belief, an idea, nothing more," she replied quietly, "and there is great value in it as long as you hold both Jedi and Sith for what they are, pieces of a whole."

There was some truth in what she said and yet it was a teaching he had to cast aside.

He had followed her guidance dutifully over the past months. By day he was one of his master's most devoted padawans, and by night he took instructions from her, whispering back and forth in the privacy of his chambers. He had quickly grown strong in the force, much more than he had any right to be, and in many ways his abilities already exceeded those of his master's.

But there had been portents of trouble from the start.

Though he believed her when she told him that she was not Sith, the frank admiration she displayed for the Sith lords of old disturbed him. He voiced his dismay, but her only response was to observe that his own achievements were due to battle stances that came from the old Sith masters, secrets she had obtained in her own time sleuthing through the ancient tombs on Korriban.

"You emulate them even as you profess to disdain them," she said with a wry smile.

"In any case," she added more distantly, "Sith is a title, yes, but that title is not who I am. It is not what I believe."

He felt himself changing the longer he had been her student, long-suppressed emotions floating to the surface. He had never been fond of the Jedi, not since his first years at the academy, but now his dislike had turned into an obsessive loathing. Every Jedi platitude he heard - and quite a few came from his master, who had told him only yesterday to "trust in the ways of the force" - seemed to put him on the verge of a blind rage.

He no longer worked to suppress his feelings, as the Jedi were wont to do, and he found the intensity of them - anger, fear, lust - to be overwhelming. It was almost as if he were a bystander, watching himself consumed by one of these emotions, the tiny speck of wisdom in his mind crying helplessly to change course.

"It is life," she had said when he brought it up with her, "you have been dead inside all this time. Now your true self is coming to the surface."

But he did not like what he was becoming. He seemed to exist in a perpetual state of anger: at the Jedi, for their rigidity and closed-mindedness; at the galaxy, for the callous brutality which pervaded it; at other sentients, for going about their daily business indifferently while this appalling state of affairs continued. He found himself laying awake at night, nearly consumed by anger and impotent frustration, concocting self-serving fantasies of saving the universe from itself. Although he had always believed in the Jedi mission to bring lasting peace to the galaxy, now the desire came accompanied with contempt for the hapless sentients who were always and inevitably at war with each other.

It had only been months since he first caught sight of the holocron, and he already felt like a wholly different person. He shuddered to think of what he might be like months or years in the future. The universe was full of choices, trails constantly diverging in all directions, and he was scared to follow this path any further.

He would not argue with her now. It did not matter whether there was value in Sith ideas, as she said. His path led elsewhere.

"The Jedi code will have to be good enough for me," he said simply.

She tapped her fingers rhythmically at her side.

"How many times have we talked about peace in the galaxy? I offer you the means to accomplish your goals and you spurn me."

She sighed.

"I knew this moment would come. I can lecture you about the emptiness of the Jedi teachings until the galaxy turns over, but it does no good unless you've felt it, unless you've experienced it at the core of your being. "

"Tell me," she said, "have we not come quite far together?"

She was right. Only a few months ago he was on the verge of being ejected from the order and now he was unquestionably his master's best pupil. With a shudder he thought of himself as he was back then, full of anxiety and hopes for a future that would never come.

"The Jedi seek to chain you inside, to make you a slave to an idea and make it so that idea would always rule you. I seek to break your chains, to make your choices wholly your own."

"You pretend to be concerned for _me_," Noval replied with contempt, "but I am only a tool for you, someone you can use to obtain a new body."

"But, my padawan," she replied, seemingly unfazed by the accusation, "you are so much more than that. You must realize I have grand plans for you."

"A shame they will never come to pass."

"Well, then," she said, looking stern now, "Go on and make another attempt with the Jedi. You will be back begging for my help soon enough."

A self-satisfied smile broke through her expression.

"Do not forget that I am not Jedi; I do not train padawans, I forge them from the fire that burns within their souls."

She furrowed her brow again.

"When the time comes I will exact a price upon you for this defiance."

He found himself breathing out with relief. If ever there was confirmation he was making the right choice, this petty and rancorous speech was it.

"May the force be with you, Nerra."

He had never addressed her by her name before, in keeping with Jedi conventions of conversation between students and masters, and it felt uncomfortably familiar now. He let the energy drain from the holocron and the whirring ceased, her image quickly flickering away. A few moments later he was staring into empty space.


	3. See them for what they are

In the beginning was the group. This is the fundamental truth about human nature and politics and...political theory has yet to come to terms with it.

Fred Alford, _Group Psychology and Political Theory_.

**1.**

Master Nimbo felt out of his element.

He sat stiffly at the head of the alabaster table, hands fidgeting uncomfortably on cold stone. The ambassadors at his side had spent the better part of the day hurling insults at each other, opening with subtle impertinence in the morning and working themselves up to contemptuous taunts by late afternoon. Nimbo had tried to insist on civility, delivering admonishments whenever he thought a line was crossed, but that only seemed to briefly reset the level of invective. Evening was growing close and he felt tired, his eyelids heavy and his mind wandering away from the proceedings around him.

"This proposal is an affront not only to us but also to our allies…"

The wizened man on Nimbo's left was speaking slowly, pausing to over-enunciate each syllable before he was interrupted in mid-sentence.

"Perhaps if the Plessians had not groveled at the feet of the Vakkarian king, they would now find themselves with the freedom to make their own agreements."

The ambassador at whom this was directed looked stunned before beginning to shake with fury.

"Honored master," although the emissary's voice as he turned to master Nimbo was steady, the medals on his chest jingled lightly as he spoke, "as always the Ulth do not negotiate in good faith. Their sole purpose here is to provoke us! I beg you to make a report of their evil intent to the council."

Nimbo leaned back into his chair. Although he caught the tail end of the exchange, he had drifted off slightly in the past few minutes, his thoughts turning to to the past as the bickering surrounding him receded into the distance. He was thinking of the duel he fought with the Sith lord haunting the galaxy several years ago, a grueling endeavor that had left him with a scar across his face and the "lord" one head shorter. What is it with the Sith, he wondered, always popping up no matter how much one cuts them down, like weeds in a garden. Will there be no end to them?

He forced his mind to focus. Be mindful of the present, he silently admonished himself.

In truth, the situation he was now facing was a bit unnerving, even for an experienced and distinguished Jedi like himself. He had been given to understand that much was riding on the peace talks here, that their importance went far beyond this planet and its age-old feuds. The negotiations themselves were taking place in the nave of an old temple, one of the only places on this planet sacred to both sides, gigantic, poorly lit, a table lined with brightly burning candles at the center and rows of chairs around it stretching in every direction. A thousand eyes were upon him now, all waiting for his reaction with bated breath.

"It would be good for all of our spirits to recess for a half-hour," he said, easing himself out of the uncomfortable chair of stone and making his way towards an exit, past the rows of chairs filled with diplomatic observers - kriffing hell, why did there have to be so many of them? - and finally out the door which creaked spitefully as he pushed it aside.

What was the council thinking, asking him to preside here? He was the only party trusted by both sides, they told him, and it had a ring of plausibility to it, the last crop of Sith causing havoc throughout the galaxy. Many considered him a hero for striking the blow that ended the menace. He became mindful of a trail of pride within his thoughts and gently chided himself. Pride leads to the dark side.

Regardless, his place was in battle, leading a charge against the forces of evil, not here, not among these bickering old men. What would he do with them? He walked aimlessly down the imposing corridors, choosing his directions at random, until at last he stumbled on an empty nook. He seated himself and tried to steady his thoughts.

A plan began forming itself in his mind.

**2.**

Noval quickly discovered the best seats were in the back aisles, away from the ambassadors who spoke in measured tones and carefully chosen platitudes, among those beneath the notice of the world: clerks, messenger boys, interns. Interns in particular were a gold mine of information.

He was sitting there now, amid the nervous chill which gripped the hall in the wake of Nimbo's departure. The master's forceful exit nearly broke the door of the hall, a fragile, ancient thing of wood with faded carvings of dancing stick-men on the surface. The door might have had some religious or historical significance of its own for he sensed relief all around him when it remained attached to its handle despite the ominous sounds of creaking wood.

He closed his eyes and focused on the conversations that were springing up in the hall. The temple would have felt brooding at any other time, seats arranged in a circle around an enormous dome which let a sprinkle of sunlight into an otherwise shadowy hall. When he first entered the chamber weeks ago, he felt small compared to the vastness of the cupola and the chilly darkness of the interior turned his thoughts to higher things. But now the nave was thronging with people, most slightly shaken by the exchange they witnessed, and the air quickly filled with nervous chatter. It felt no different than any other room.

He let his mind roam about, soaking up the surface thoughts that seemed to be fluttering in the air. It was almost effortless now, as if the thoughts themselves were gently drifting to him in the breeze and all he had to do was reach out and pull - though he could hardly forget his many failures when Nerra attempted to teach him the technique shortly after emerging from the holocron.

"See their souls and minds," she told him at the time, as he sat still in the foliage on the outskirts of the Jedi camp and sensed the padawans walking about their daily chores, "see their thoughts and dreams and worries, too many to fill the open air. See them for what they are."

The instructions were not terribly helpful. How would he go about "seeing them for what they are?" He did his best with no discernible effect. She seemed unruffled by his failures, simply instructing him to try again each time. "You might not have it in you," she said with a philosophic detachment when he asked for clearer instructions.

So he tried again and again. He reached out with the force and tried to sense the true nature of the students in the camp, whatever it was that lurked at their core, beneath their clothes and words and carefully constructed exteriors. Nothing. He would close his eyes and compress his consciousness to a point and push it out of his mind, into the world around him, until he felt himself indistinguishable from the rocks and the trees and the wind. Nothing again. He would strain his ears and use the force to pull on the empty air, trying to bring fragments of the world into himself; he pulled and tugged on the force in every conceivable way and it did not as much as alter the course of a single mote of dust.

He was beginning to lose hope when, one day, it finally happened: he heard the words of anger and resentment as they rumbled through the mind of a padawan who lost a bout in the fighting ring. It felt as if a jolt of electricity had run through his body before the padawan smothered the emotion away. It was hard to say what, exactly, he was doing differently now - or indeed how he did it at all - but he managed to repeat the feat several more times that day.

"You have brushed the surface thoughts of another," Nerra said, looking at him with evident satisfaction. "It is something that masters have trained years for and never learned." She seemed surprisingly beautiful then, looking at him without her habitual frown.

With some effort he pushed the memories away and turned his attention back to the present, to the conversations in the temple. Zooming from mind to mind, he paused on an ambassador from one of the neutral systems interviewed by a member of the press.

"The agreements discussed in these negotiations are of the utmost importance to peace in the outer rim and will have wide-ranging repercussions for galactic stability. If the Ulth and the Plessians, who have been neighbors for millenia, cannot find a common language, it bodes ill for a galaxy of millions of planets and countless species... "

There was little point in listening further. Noval had not read the ambassador's thoughts but he could sense the man was on autopilot, the words almost delivering themselves out of his mouth.

He pulled his mind away and let it drift again.

"...another sordid chapter in the history of the Plessian people. Will there be no end to the wars they provoke?"

The speaker was an unhealthily pale woman dressed in the Ulth colors, trying to catch the attention of a reporter who was absent-mindedly scanning the hall. She was surrounded by a clique of her fellow countrymen who nodded enthusiastically at each sentence.

"The only solution," she went on, "is to unite the planet under one rule..."

The loudest voices always belonged to the partisans, their burning anger pushing them to the forefront of the mental cacophony. Noval adjusted his mind so that he would not hear the speaker before wading back in.

He idled briefly over a pair of Ithorians who were heatedly rehashing the history of the planet.

"Chupak-a-geelfa-a-pad-a-sead-e-geelfa..."

He pushed deeper into their minds, past mere words, far enough to feel their speech as if it came from his lips.

"The Plessians are the real victims," said the larger and greener of the two. "Most of their territory has been in and out of Ulth occupation over the past century."

"But have you forgotten who it was that started the conflict, all those many years ago?" The other Ithorian seemed to have reached the opposite conclusion. "I'll remind you it was the Plessian prince who kidnapped..."

"You've both gotten it wrong." A thin, mustached human inserted himself into the conversation, his speech rendered fitful and choppy in Ithorian-speak by the automatic translator. "Both sides are victims here. The real villain is the Republic..." He launched into a short speech, arguing that had the Republic not intervened, a century ago, in a particularly violent outbreak of hostilities between the Ulth and Plessians, the conflict would be over by now. "The Republic created this war," the man concluded, with assurance and conviction in his voice seeming to leave no room for doubt.

It was surprisingly difficult to understand the real actors in this conflict, to conjecture what calculations they might be making or guess at their short-term plans; there was a plethora of information but most of it was skewed by political agendas and of little use. His mind passed over a pair of human females who had sewn together the Plessian and Ulth flags and were silently waving them to-and-fro, apparently believing that they were making a contribution to galactic peace - over the group of ambassadors, all from planets in the far corner of the galaxy, pleasantly commiserating about man's inhumanity to man - until he finally stumbled onto something of interest.

"You really think the Vakkarian army can be defeated in less than a month? If it ever comes down to it, I wager you'll be in for a rude surprise. There will be more than enough time for Danoor to land reinforcements."

"Nonsense - don't let the fleet counts fool you, most Vakkarian ships are using engine cores a century old. Sarrelon's fleet will overrun them in a matter of days."

This was spoken within earshot and a glance revealed that the speakers were interns with one of the non-aligned kingdoms just outside the sector. Noval did not need his Jedi talents to see that the debate was less about its ostensible subject than about impressing the pretty Twilek who was standing with them. She seemed to be paying close attention, perhaps out of amusement at the insults which peppered their debate. But the argument quickly got technical, discussion turning to engine types and turret counts. The Twilek moved away, indifferent to the turn of conversation, which itself fizzled out once the interns realized they were without an audience.

Noval made a mental note to look up the information he heard about engine cores. He could not help noticing that the same scene played out here in different guises day after day, the males of each species competing to dominate conversation in a bid for female attention. There was something primordial about it, the veneer of civilization giving way as if they were beasts crossing antlers. Something else was clearly in play here as well, something about the Twilek females which seemed to draw an inordinate amount of attention from males of the human species. Noval made another mental note to research this, perhaps once the negotiations were over and time was less pressing.

Everyone here seemed to talk in jargon dumps of information, a medley of planetary names and factions that were unfamiliar to him. He vaguely remembered hearing the Alliance of Vakkar mentioned in one of his classes at the academy but he could not even recall what class that was. Weeks ago, he had felt confused and overwhelmed after spending his first day at these negotiations. For one thing, what had Vakkar, as well as any of the other nations often mentioned here in the same breath, to do with this conflict?

He tried asking some polite questions. The next day he approached two boys about his age who were having an animated debate in one of the isles. Apologizing profusely, he said he could not help overhearing them; and he wondered if they would be willing to explain their reasoning to an outsider like him - specifically, how were planets so far across the galaxy were relevant to a discussion of the situation here? They looked him up and down, clearly taking him for a fool, and proceeded to ignore him outright as they turned back to their conversation.

Discouraged but unwilling to give up, Noval tried this several times more; but the replies he received ranged from mocking jeers to brief answers intended to send him on his way. The people here were not very keen on being helpful.

So he stayed up late into the night, obsessively reading the news and going through a myriad of threads on the holonets. It was hard going at first, facts and noise being so mixed together that he could not tell which was which. But now, after weeks of work, at last he was finally feeling as if the pieces of information were finally coming together.

The galaxy was an intricate web of alliances, each nation enmeshed in a web of reciprocity which committed it to the defense of others. The Alliance of Vakkar was rumored to have signed a secret treaty with the Plessians, obligating it to the defense of Plessian territories in exchange for tribute. But Vakkar was only a mid-sized power itself and had a patron in Danoor, a republic-like conglomerate of planets which dominated politics on the fringes of the outer rim. On the other side, the Ulth had their own string of alliances, starting with the neighboring Princedom of Sarrelon and stretching across the span of the galaxy, and these were not any less powerful. A local planetary dispute such as this one could easily escalate into a conflict involving most of the planets in the outer rim.

"You do know the assassination is only a pretext?"

That pair of interns now attached themselves to a new group, one with several females at that, and though these females were only human the audience breathed new life into their argument. The males in the group did not look too pleased at the addition to their number, but their displeasure was confined to askance glances.

"You hit the mark there, my confused friend. This is about the the economy of Danoor going downhill..."

Noval sighed inwardly. The information he got by eavesdropping was only partially reliable. He was certain that no one had planned the present crisis. The assassination of the Ulth heir-presumptive which sparked it had caught everyone by surprise; in the aftermath, the Ulth royals had talked themselves into believing that everything was masterminded by the Plessians, the lack of any direct evidence not bothering them in the slightest. To recite this was to state the obvious; which is why the interns were instead arguing for counter-intuitive theories which allowed them to exhibit their knowledge and cleverness.

All the same, the conspiracy theories being offered by the interns were not ungrounded in fact. Power among nations was not constant, it waxed and waned as some star systems prospered and others declined, and any major shift in power eventually led to a "realignment" - a word on everyone's lips these days - when the galaxy erupted in flames before the web of treaties adapted itself to a new equilibrium. It was not outlandish to imagine that the present crisis was manufactured for such a purpose.

In short, the outer rim was powderkeg and his master held the fuse. It was his responsibility to see that it did not ignite.

Noval wished he could feel more optimistic.

**3.**

It was perhaps his finest performance. He gave a rousing call to unity, a paean to the virtues of peaceful co-existence. He talked about their comrades-at-arms who had died in past wars between their nations, a mountain of corpses, too many to even imagine, and all for nothing - unless they make it mean something in the here and now, unless they agree to a lasting peace, then all the previous sacrifices would lead up to this, they would have meaning, the corpses having piled up for a future where war is only something you read about in a book.

He looked at their faces and saw it was not enough.

It was not that they were unmoved. Nimbo could not help but detect a note of sadness that entered their stances, hints of longing in their eyes. Few of them would meet his gaze. And yet, despite it all, they still looked like children accepting a rebuke from their teacher, biding their time until the harsh words were over all the while knowing they would never mend their ways.

He groaned inwardly. Well, then. It was time for plan B.

**4.**

The Plessian ambassador looked to be astonished as he emerged from the master's quarters.

"Peace in our time," he murmured. "It _is_ possible…." His voice trailed off.

He turned and looked intently at Noval before shifting his gaze to the padawan who stood guard alongside him.

"It is possible after all!"

Noval did not know what to say. Fortunately, no response was required: the ambassador turned abruptly and nearly sprinted in the direction of his quarters.

So he did it after all, Noval thought with satisfaction. How wrong he had been to doubt his master! Nimbo had saved the galaxy before and would do so again.

He was wrong about so many things. The Jedi order had existed for thousands of years and would exist for thousands more. He was lucky to be a part of it, to be a part of the tradition that represented everything that was good about the galaxy. He breathed out, overcome with relief; it felt almost as if he had just returned home after a painful spell apart.

For no apparent reason, his neighbor snickered.

Noval turned to look at him. His name was Wrasho and he was an odd boy, a little too cheerful and prone to sarcastic remarks. Among all of Nimbo's pupils, he was the friendliest and most welcoming to Noval when he joined the group months ago. He had a passion for everything connected to the order that was nearly bursting out of him and were it not for his unrestrained and often inappropriate humor, very much unbecoming in someone who would one day be a Jedi knight, he would have been able to have his choice of master. As it stood, only Nimbo had been willing to take him on, no doubt because Wrasho was naturally good with the saber and Nimbo had been willing to overlook much on that score.

It was unclear how Nimbo circumvented the rules which allowed him only a single padawan. The rules were very clear on that score, and with good reason: students should not have to compete for the master's attention and every padawan was supposed to be the undivided recipient of a lifetime of wisdom. His master, nevertheless, had an army of pupils trailing him from mission to mission. Noval had heard rumors that only the oldest among them, a girl named Krava who had been apprenticed with Nimbo for over a decade, was officially designated as his padawan. That his master was allowed to get away with this was likely a sign of the respect he commanded within the order.

"D'you know what that was about?" Wrasho waved in the direction of the ambassador.

"Do you?"

"Yup. Nimbs mind-tricked him. Not just once, but again and again, for several hours. That's why he looked so spaced now just now."

"He did the Ulth ambassador earlier," Wrasho continued. "Our master has had a very busy day."

A mind trick? Noval's elated state drained away, his earlier doubts instantly flooding his mind with anxiety. He felt few moral qualms about manipulating minds, but what would happen once the ambassadors reported back to their governments? At first glance, his master's actions did not seem to be well thought-out. Would the ambassadors persuade their superiors or would each side immediately suspect foul play by the other?


	4. The best of all possible galaxies

**1.**

He stared at the half-written sentence and it seemed to gaze back at him with amusement.

He wanted to write something meaningful to Reena, something that crystallized the turmoil within him: his loyalty to his master and his fears that Nimbo was leading the galaxy to disaster, the forbidden knowledge at his disposal and his fears of exploring it. But he could not speak plainly of the latter and, eschewing a direct explanation, he found that everything he set down on the page did not seem right, was not what he had really intended to say.

They exchanged letters regularly at first but over the course of months their missives dwindled and their tone had grown distant. Reena was accompanying Master Shayn to another archaeological expedition, this one at one of one the far corners of the galaxy, months of travel away. Her last letter felt as if she had composed it purely out of a sense of obligation: a perfunctory recitation of the daily difficulties her expedition faced, life without running water and all that, with a jarringly formal sign-off.

He wanted to write something that would rekindle the spark of friendship between them. This, however, was easier said than done, and he spent the better part of an afternoon struggling to think of what he could say. At one point, he tried to describe what his life was really like these days, but that turned out be extraordinarily dull. For lack of better ideas, he tried writing her about a dream he had recently which disturbed him greatly. It had the same vividness, the same feeling as the prophetic dreams he had when he was younger. In the dream, he was walking down a busy street with an oddly vacant stare in his eyes. Outwardly everything had appeared perfectly normal, but each step was somehow painful, each one more difficult than the last. He felt himself drowning in the effort it took to put one foot in front of the other.

There was something strangely disquieting about it though he could not say what it was. He would have easily dismissed it from his thoughts had it not felt so much like his dreams of long ago when he saw events that would later come to pass. He tried to explain all this in the letter but it had come out jumbled and after a while he crumpled up the paper and threw it away.

He was only glad to be interrupted when Wrasho casually strolled into his room, seeming altogether too pleased with himself, followed by Krava, the oldest of the padawans under Nimbo's tutelage.

"We have stayed within the walls of this temple long enough," Krava said, "and we tire of its empty halls. Care to take a closer look at the locals with us?"

They were not, in fact, supposed to leave the temple; their master had forbidden it, likely out of fear that he would have to answer for their behavior should one of them get caught up in some mischief within the city proper. Besides, Nimbo told them on the day they arrived here, trips to the planet would likely prove distracting; they should focus on their meditation, their saber skills, all the things that were supposed to constitute the bulk of their training.

All the same, Noval felt that he could not bear to spend any more time in his room in front of the empty parchment.

Shortly thereafter, the three of them mind-tricked the guards at the entrance of the temple and strode down into the city below. All three were in a cheerful mood; even if their master found out about this escapade, they would likely receive only a symbolic punishment, Nimbo himself being known for having routinely broken the order's rules in his youth.

The tension hung heavy in the air and they sensed it almost as soon as they stepped out of the temple. Clumps of Gamorrean mercenaries were standing about in heavy armor, often riddled with blaster-holes; uniformed policemen looked at them uneasily at every intersection, their hands never straying too far from their blasters; pedestrians seemed to rush forward and avoid eye contact.

They ambled about the city without hurry, gazing at the pretty palaces and mansions built millennia ago which, along with the towering monuments to recent military victories, constituted the chief attractions of the city. The contrast between the flowery, graceful air of the older architecture and the overpowering, brutal feeling conveyed by the recent additions was a reminder that the planet was not always mired in war, that there was a time when the people here devoted themselves to nobler pursuits.

In truth, there were more impressive places in the galaxy; still, all of them felt terribly excited at the newness of it all. The brightly-tiled sunburned roofs and cobblestone alleyways were so deliciously unlike the endless expanse of crop fields surrounding the academy on Dantooine.

Soon the afternoon lull came, darkness covering the planet as the twin suns occluded each other in the sky. It would be several hours before the air was full of sunlight again and meanwhile little was visible. After a bit of awkward meandering, they entered the first cantina they stumbled upon.

Inside the mood seemed more relaxed. A band of Bith was playing a cheery tune on their flutes and happiness seemed reflected in the faces of the crowd. People wearing Ulth colors were drinking together with their Plessians counterparts. A Twilek blissfully flailed her arms in front of the band, apparently lost in the melody.

They looked at each other awkwardly for a few moments before, by some wordless mutual agreement, sidling up to the bar and ordering drinks. Alcohol was frowned upon in the Jedi tradition, along with other drugs that distort the mind; but there seemed to be an understanding between the three of them that such things were not to be mentioned now. They were out in defiance of their master's orders, and what was one more rule to be broken?

They carried their drinks to a secluded table at the corner. Catching a whiff of the conversations around them, it seemed as if nearly everyone was talking about the agreement struck by the ambassadors on the previous day (an agreement which, Noval knew, was supposed to be kept secret), likely accounting for the cheerful mood around the cantina. For the moment, Noval felt simply glad to be here, happy to sit and soak up the chemically-induced feelings of glee. He looked at his companions, all sitting with drinks in front of them, also seeming elated by the escape from their daily routine.

"Do you think it'll work?" Krava was the first among them to break the silence.

"Sure," Wrasho replied in between sips of his ale. It went without saying the _it_ they were discussing was their master's strategy of mind-tricking the ambassadors.

Krava stared off into the distance. "But," she said, looking uncomfortable, "if so, why don't the Jedi do this more often? Why didn't the master do it on his first day here?"

Wrasho shrugged. "Probably the same ethical concerns that keep Jedi from doing the million other things they aren't supposed to do."

Krava did not seem fully convinced. "I don't know," she said slowly, "given how strict the order can be, most Jedi seem surprisingly blase about the ethics of mind tricks. What do you think, Noval?"

But Noval was distracted. He suddenly felt a spike of anxiety, a sharp sting of fear that seemed to tear right through him. He had to grip his hands firmly on the table to prevent himself from falling off his stool. His ability to read the surface thoughts of others had become an unconscious habit and he realized with a start that the emotions he felt were not his own.

It was someone walking towards him. He felt lost in the feelings for a moment, lost in a desire to be unfettered, a desperate need to be away from something. The strength of the emotions propelled them above the noisy ambience of the crowd. It was nearby now and, impulsively, he reached out his hand and touched it.

"It" turned out to be a young woman in an elegant tunic the color of emerald, dark haired with hazel eyes, looking startled to have a stranger catch her hand. She looked at him with a startled mixture of confusion and apprehension.

"Apologies," he improvised, clumsily letting go of her arm, "but this is the first night in the city for me and my friends and," he paused searchingly, "and we were wondering if you might like to join us?"

It was, in restrospect, a somewhat silly thing to say to a woman walking past their table. Krava gave him an irritated glare and Wrasho seemed to be smirking at what must have appeared to be a very ham-handed approach. The woman hesitated briefly, casting a calculating glance at him and his friends, before flashing them a quick smile.

"Why, thank you," she said as she sat down, "that would be lovely. I always enjoy meeting new people."

**2.**

An awkward silence ensued. Noval had few occasions to practice small talk in the academy and racked his brain for something to say. Wrasho and Krava looked at him quizzically, likely thinking he should be the one to initiate conversation with a stranger he had invited to their table.

Fortunately, once their guest had ceased casting glances around the cantina, she had only to look at them to break the ice.

"You must be from off-world," she said.

"What gave us away?" Noval thought they were blending in splendidly, having traded their Jedi robes for the nondescript overalls that seemed de rigeur on this planet.

"A million different things," she said. "The colors of your garments. Your manner of sitting. The way you speak. You are neither Ulth nor Plessian."

"We are clerks with one of the diplomatic delegations," Krava interjected, not wishing to attract attention to three Jedi padawans who were not where they should be. "And it occurs to me that we have not been properly introduced."

They said their names, and when it came to their visitor she introduced herself as Eeso.

"We do not normally ask strangers to join us," Noval said looking at her, "but I couldn't help noticing that you were trying very hard to hide from something."

She seemed to hesitate before nodding.

"You are perceptive," she said, "it is nothing of any great importance. Members of the Ulth delegation are forbidden from leaving the embassy after hours," she said. "But, tonight, I felt an urge to be elsewhere."

She sipped the purple, syrupy drink that was Noval's until a few moments ago.

"We can sympathize with that," Wrasho grinned.

"Is anyone looking for you?" Krava asked, with more curiosity than concern in her voice.

Eeso nodded offhandedly. "Our royal security corps, I'm afraid. But it'll be an hour or two before they find me and I intend to make good use of that time."

Noval closed his eyes. The noisy sounds of the cantina tapered off until he heard only the breath of life around him. He did not know how to read her mind - Nerra had not taught him that much - but he could sense her feelings more clearly now that she was in front of him. He felt her anxiety, her desire to escape. She was not deceiving them, though he sensed there was also much she was not telling them.

"Why makes you so certain they will find you at all?" Wrasho asked.

Eeso held out her arm and pointed at the large, nebulous spot in the middle. "A tracker. All of us have them. But it can only localize me to a city block or so."

"But enough of such dreary things," she said, standing up. "As I said, I intend to make use of the time I have here. Does anyone want to dance?"

"I do," Wrasho said, which was just as well since Noval did not know how.

**3.**

Somehow Eeso convinced the Bith to change their tune; the music became faster, the beats louder, and the floor started to teem with people. The aliens in the cantina looked on with amusement and disapproval at the largely human dancefloor.

A tall man with a chiseled face asked Krava to dance and she obliged after a moment's hesitation. Alone at the table, Noval sat back and and tuned his mind to the thoughts fluttering all around him. It was an oddly relaxing exercise, to experience the feelings of hundreds of people simultaneously.

Nerra had once told him that relying on sight to perceive the world is akin to staring at the galaxy through a crack in the door, and he was slowly coming to understand the truth of her words. What he could sense most clearly now was an amalgamation of the feelings around him, wave after wave of unadulterated pleasure from a crowd lost in the music. He envied them, having never experienced this sensation himself, the utter abandonment that comes from immersing yourself in the rhythm.

Occasionally, he sensed a fragment of thought that he recognized as coming from one of his friends, or from the girl he invited to their table. He could tell that all three were enjoying himself, Krava and Wrasho despite the occasional scruple coming from the guilty knowledge that the order would frown upon their current behavior. Eeso's pleasure, by contrast, seemed to wholehearted and without any such reservations.

A few minutes later he found himself jolted out of this thoughts as he sensed something out of the ordinary. He looked around and calmly rose from the table, making his way to the dance floor and tapping Eeso on the shoulder once he had found her in the undifferentiated mass of people. He pointed towards the men who just entered the bar, six at each entrance.

Her face plainly showed her disappointment.

"Come with me," he said, almost yelling, his voice barely heard above the din of the music. She looked searchingly around the cantina before nodding. He took her by the hand and slowly led her to one of the exits.

Why did he decide to help her? He wondered at that himself. Perhaps it was instinct, a gut reaction to her desire to get away which seemed to mirror what he felt within his own soul.

As he approached the exit, it suddenly occurred to him that, alone, he could not mind-trick six men simultaneously.

What to do? He enumerated his options and none seemed satisfactory.

He ran his mind over the thoughts of the men standing at the door, feeling each of them and choosing one from their number. He felt this man's concentration, his eyes scouring the cantina, his cold resolve to follow, always, whatever orders he was given.

Noval pushed deeper.

He had asked Nerra once about manipulating minds but she had only smiled cryptically and said he would learn about such things in time. He felt himself lost now in the jumble of the man's thoughts, almost as if swayed about in a turbulent stream. A sense of revulsion came over him. Something was inexplicably wrong. The foreigness of the images streaming before his eyes was like a heavy weight on his chest. With some effort, he steadied himself and plunged forward.

But moments later he felt again that he couldn't bear it, that he had to get away. The urge was too strong to resist. The stream of thoughts began to feel like a current beneath an ocean's surface, and he was out of breadth, swimming up towards the air and out of the man's mind. He tried fighting the compulsion, tried to push himself back in the direction of the depths, all to no end.

The man himself was on his knees now, head cradled in his hands. Though he scarcely realized the cause of his sudden, piercing headache, unconsciously he was fighting back. Noval felt his will slowly ejected out of the man's mind; yet, just before he was flung out, he managed to tug at one of the images rushing by, softly whispering, _there, that one_.

The man suddenly began pointing to the corner of the dancefloor, yelling something to those who stood beside him. A few seconds later, all six of them rushed inside the cantina. After waiting patiently for a few moments, Noval calmly walked out the door with Eeso at his side.

**4.**

"How did you know they were about to leave?" she asked as soon as they had turned down a side street.

Noval remained silent. He was debating how much he should tell her when she answered her own question.

"You're a Jedi."

He nodded. There was little point in denying it.

"Are you the famous master Nimbo?"

He couldn't help but laugh.

"I am far too young to be a master. I am one of master Nimbo's many padawans."

Eeso looked at him as if taking his measure for the first time.

"Thank you," she said.

He nodded.

"I envy you, you know. Supposedly Jedi travel the galaxy, a million different worlds always at your beck and call. It must be a life full of wonder."

"I'm sure life in the Ulth diplomatic corps is not so bad," Noval replied.

"It is not so bad," she said, looking away. "There are worse fates in life. Some might say I am very fortunate."

She cast another look at Noval. He sensed she was on the verge of saying more and kept his silence.

"The world of the Ulth is very..." she seemed to be struggling to find the right word "...regimented. Our stations are fixed at birth. What we do in life is decided ahead of time. That I will be doing a stint with the embassy for a year or two was decided long ago by my family, for instance. "

"There must be some comfort in that," Noval said.

She shrugged.

"Some say so. I have yet to find the comfort in it."

"We are not so different," he replied after a short pause, "the Jedi order is not what you imagine it to be. It feels like a prison at times."

She looked at him with interest. "Really?"

"The teachings of the masters are not very flexible," he said, "and we must all conform to them."

He thought for a few moments.

"Two years ago, one of the padawans in my class committed an unforgivable sin. He would say, to anyone who would bother to hear him out, that the force was, by its very nature, evil. Do you know what the force is?"

"That mysterious source of energy the Jedi draw their power from?"

"Right," Noval said. "Jedi are often fond of thinking the force has a will of its own, that the coincidences that happen to us have somehow been engineered by the force for some unknown purpose. My master has decreed several times since landing on this planet that the force has brought him here."

"Now Gil - that was the padawan's name - took this one step further. If the force does have a purpose, Gil would say, it is not a good one. After all, the galaxy has been in quite a bit of disarray for a while, hasn't it? And if the force has a will of it's own and a power to shape events, its hard to believe it has not achieved its goals, whatever those may be."

"And this did not go well for Gil?"

"Indeed. The masters left him alone for a few while, hoping he would come to his senses. But, if anything, Gil seemed to get more strident, more impatient with the masters for refusing to see the truth of his words. He thought his insights had important implications for how the Jedi order went about its work."

"One day, he publicly confronted one of the great masters of the order. He said that this galaxy was the best of all possible galaxies, at least as far as the force or any power that shapes events within it is concerned. He challenged the master to explain why the Sith appear as often as they do if the force is powerful and benevolent. The master said nothing but the next day Gil was nowhere to be found."

"He was not killed, was he?"

"No," Noval laughed, "nothing so dramatic as that. He was put on the first ship off Dantoine with a few credits in his pocket. We still get letters from him occasionally. I believe he is a farmer now. Supposed to be quite good at it too."

She nodded. "I can see why you feel as if you're in cage."

"Tell me," she went on. "What does the force feel like?"

"It is a difficult thing to describe," Noval said.

"Please, I wish to know."

It was not a question he could answer well, for the force felt entirely unlike anything else. It was like describing the taste of chocolate to someone who had never tried it.

"Imagine awakening and hearing the heartbeat of the galaxy for the first time..." he began. But that was unsatisfactory, somehow it wasn't _right._

He had discussed the very same question with Nerra some months ago and now he could think of nothing else but to repeat what she had said to him then.

"It is like a cloud, a mist that drifts from living creature to creature, set in motion by currents and eddies," he began.

"It is the eye of the storm, the passions of all living things turned into energy, into a chorus. It is the rising end at the swell of life, the promise of new territories and new blood, the call of new mysteries in the dark."

"I see," she said when it was clear he had finished. "Thank you, I suppose."

They walked quietly for a while before she broke the silence.

"I don't imagine you've heard about Prince Atre?"

Noval shook his head.

"It is not something the Ulth like to publicize. Atre was the fifth in line to the throne. A short, easily excited boy who, to the ire of his overseers, liked history books much more than he liked swordfights. He was never without a book under his arm," she laughed, "in fact, he often tried to read as he walked, holding the book in front of him. As you might imagine, he had a lot of bruises on his forehead."

"He had a bit too much to drink on the eve of the last solstice and got into a heated argument with one of the minor nobles who occupied the seat beside him at the feast. Several witnesses heard him declare that both sides were equally to blame for the civil war that broke this planet into Ulth and Plessians."

"I forget what he said, exactly. He had many details to back him up - supposed agreements that the Ulth had broken, opportunities for peace discarded out of bloodlust or desire for revenge. I have no idea if any of it was true."

"I take it things ended badly for him?" Noval asked.

Eeso nodded.

"It was the details that did him in. Had he been less thorough, he might have laughed it off as some kind of drunken joke, a misunderstood attempt at irony perhaps. As things stood, his arguments were a little too convincing. There were no excuses that could be made. He hasn't been since in over a year. The official story is that he has fallen ill and sent to a sanatorium in the mountains to recover in the open air."

"We used to play as kids, you now," Eeso went on, looking at him shyly, "ah - despite the difference in our stations. His father had borrowed some money from mine, and my family had secretly hoped he would take to me and we would elope. It didn't happen."

"I wonder where he is at times. In a prison cell, with only his jailer to keep him company? Was our regent merciful - was Atre allowed to live his out his life under an assumed name on some distant planet? Likely I will never know."

They walked in silence. There seemed to be little more to say on the subject.

"What do you think of the progress of the negotiations?" Noval asked when the quietness had become awkward.

"Disastrous," she replied distractedly. "Whatever stratagem your master employed will not last. The royal families on both sides will conclude that trickery was involved."

"Are you sure?" Noval was hoping to receive a different answer.

She nodded. "Besides, these negotiations were doomed to fail from the start. The royals on both sides despise each other. Their allies had forced these negotiations on them; they did not agree to sit across a table on their own, I can assure you of that. The hatred on my side is particularly virulent. The conflict had become a matter of honor and honor can only be satisfied by blood."

"It is not an easy thing to describe," she said, looking tentatively at Noval. "Among the Ulth, concepts like honor and dignity are paramount. Concepts that have disappeared entirely from much of the galaxy. The Ulth emperor would sooner strange his own children than forego a chance to revenge himself on the Plessians."

"Is there any way my master could have succeeded?"

She shrugged. "I don't see how. He didn't even have the two monarchs in front of him, only some envoys powerless to make any real concessions."

"In truth," she looked tentatively at Noval now, "this is why I felt the need to get away today. Look around you - " she gestured at the cobbles on the street around her and the dark afternoon sky, "this is one of the last days of a peaceful world. Tomorrow or in the days thereafter, everything here will change. I look at it all and wonder how much will remain standing in a year's time."

Noval looked around. It was indeed a beautiful city. They were standing beside a row of guild-houses, each one adorned with a family crest and a bevy of ornate stone figurines, each one in a stated of excited nudity. It would be a shame if all this were reduced to rubble.

"I can help you escape," he replied, the words seeming to form themselves in his mouth. "If you would like, I can arrange transport for you off-world."

She stared at him intensely and said nothing.

"You escaped your handlers once," he went on, "you could do so again. We could meet in one of the spaceports. I'll find a pilot to take you off this planet, someone who is paid in advance and honest."

She looked away. They turned the corner of one one of the major bridges of the city, a tiled walkway punctuated by elaborate statues of heroes from the city's past. Rays of sunlight were starting to fall as the suns began to move away from each other in the sky.

"And then what?" she asked. "What would I do once I am off this world?"

"Anything," Noval said. "Anything you want. I would help you as much as I can..."

He let his words hang in the air.

"No," she said at last, "though I thank you. It is very kind of you to offer, really. But my place is here, in the only world I have ever known."

He nodded without surprise.

"In any case," she said, smiling, "the first glimmer of light is here and it is high time I made my way back. Thank you again, for what you did, and for what you offered me."

"My pleasure," Noval said sincerely.

"Our paths will cross again, I hope." She gave him a quick half-bow before turning away and quickly disappearing into one of the cramped alleys that lined the city.

He walked back to the temple slowly. His heart booming with a sense of adventure; but he was saddened that she had left without offering to keep in touch. Well, she knew he was his master's padawan; if she wanted, she could find him without much difficulty.

He was ready to mind-trick the guards at the entrance but they seemed to think there was little out of the ordinary in a Jedi padawan walking into the temple, even at this hour. Once in his room, he collapsed onto his bed and instantly fell into a heavy slumber that lasted for many hours - until he was finally awakened, on the following day, by the sound of explosions and blaster fire.


	5. The pieces of the puzzle are before you

**1.**

His first instinct was to check that his lightsaber was still attached to his hip. After a moment's panic - his thoughts seem to scatter in all directions as he wondered what he should do - he decided he was in no immediate danger. This temple was sacred to all inhabitants of the planet and neither army would dare to fire on it, at least not just yet.

The window of his room showed a bird's eye-view of the city and the sight it presented now was a grim one: intermittent flashes of blaster fire, the loud buzz of drone flocks in the air, columns of black smoke beginning to cloud the skies. The streets were empty and thick clumps of refugees streamed out of the city gates.

Failure, then.

Not only would the planet return to its cycle of violence, but the ensuing conflict may well end up drawing most of the outer rim into war. He could only hope his reading of the situation was mistaken.

The failure was his master's but he could not get rid of the nagging feeling that part of it was his own. It was hard to imagine what, exactly, he could have done to alter the course of events - he was a mere observer, consigned to lurking in the back rows and trying to make sense of the proceedings. But maybe that was merely a facet of his failure, his inability to imagine how the world might be steered. Would he spend the coming decades going over every detail of the past few weeks, wondering if he could have prevented a world war if he had been a little more clever?

There was one avenue unexplored, one course of action left to him. He hesitated only briefly.

Pulling out the holocron, he sat down on the floor in front of it and steeled himself for the conversation that was about to follow. Closing his eyes and reaching out with the force, he felt the currents within oscillating with a ravenous energy. She had, no doubt, been anticipating this for some time.

"That did not take very long," as always he heard her voice, now laced with mockery, before he opened his eyes. "It has been what - three weeks? - since we last spoke. Has your last attempt with the Jedi run its course already?"

"I am sorry about what I said before," Noval said quickly, " - we can talk about it later - I will do what you say - but now something else must be done - half the galaxy is on the brink of war - "

He stopped as he ran out of breath.

"Ah," she said. "I imagine you speak of the failed negotiations within this shrine."

"How…" Noval nearly choked on his words. "How do you know that? I've mentioned nothing about it to you."

"Indeed you have not," she said, sounding slightly peevish. "But I am not unaware of the events of the world from my little prison."

"How is that possible?"

She gave him the briefest of smiles.

"I believe you were about to explain how the spider's web of alliances will draw the nations of the galaxy into this war, one by one."

Noval controlled his mounting panic. He had always assumed that her knowledge of the world was limited to what he chose to reveal. He would have to think through the implications of this later.

"It seems you know it already."

"Though I appreciate the news bulletin," she said icily, "I cannot help but wonder if there is any particular reason you have called me forth now."

"I want your help to stop it, of course."

"Ah." She seemed to consider this. "Perhaps I should ask why, exactly, I ought be helping you?" She said this lightly, less a demand that a challenge.

"I….." Noval paused. "You must be desiring a new body. I will help you obtain one, I promise."

Nerra shrugged indifferently.

"I have no way of holding you to your promise. I suspect that, were I to give you the help you seek, you would have a convenient change of heart later.''

"Millions will die," he said, a wave of anger coursing through him uncontrollably, "perhaps billions or trillions or even more. You don't want to stop it?" His face darkened. "I know you are merely an echo of your former self, but I imagined you'd have a shred of humanity left."

"Mmm," she said, seemingly unperturbed. "Peppering your conversation with invective will not get me to help. And as to whether I want to help..."

She paused. "The force binds all things. The slightest push, the smallest touch, sends echoes throughout life. Act rashly and, in the end, all you will have wrought is more pain."

"It is a difficult teaching to absorb," she said slowly, "and perhaps this is as good a time as any to consider it. I will give you one more lesson, perhaps your final one. Let us talk about about peace in the galaxy and the means by which it may be achieved."

"I don't know if you can hear the blaster fire…" Noval began.

"My hearing is fine, padawan. Calm yourself, this will not take long. As you are well-aware, we are not in any immediate danger."

**2.**

"If there is one obvious fact about the galaxy," Nerra began, "it is that it always exists in a state of war. Search your knowledge of history, padawan - has there ever been a time of long-lasting peace?"

Noval forced himself to consider it.

"I suppose the periods between the major Sith wars have been relatively peaceful."

"Such times never lasted too long," Nerra replied, "and besides, widespread conflicts proliferated on a smaller scale then. But while peace has been elusive for the galaxy, there have been regions which were able to achieve it. Before we start amateurishly dabbling in galactic politics, it would be good to have a _theory - _that is, some understanding of the mechanisms which allow or do not allow peace to happen."

"You have heard about the twin planets of Engirra and Fressia? Surely your education at the Jedi academy - deficient as it was in matters of history, logic, and indeed basic common sense - made some mention of them?"

Noval nodded. In fact, he had not heard of either of these planets before doing background reading on the present conflict. Spiteful and petty as she sometimes was, Nerra's scorn of the academy of Dantooine was largely on-target, for his education left him largely unprepared to make sense of galactic politics.

"These two planets fought each other continually for over a thousand years. And yet, in the here and now, it is hard to find stauncher allies. Again, search your knowledge of history, padawan, there are many such cases."

"So let us consider this one at some length," she said. "Tell me, how do you think peace between these two planets came about?"

For someone who had been removed from world, she seemed quite well-informed about galactic affairs. Noval wondered just how long she had spent in the holocron; he had asked her many times but her replies were always evasive. In principle, she could have been inside the holocron for several thousand years - any longer and their speech would not be mutually comprehensible - but Noval suspected the true answer was on the order of decades or centuries at the most.

"It would be unthinkable for them to go to war now," he said. "Those two planets have been allies for centuries."

"But how did this state of affairs emerge?" Nerra persisted. "Have you forgotten how many wars they fought once? Children on either side would grow up playing at massacring the other. What changed?"

"I don't know," Noval said. He had spent much time recently trying to understand the driving forces behind politics on this planet, which left him little time to learn much else. "Perhaps they grew tired of fighting each other?"

"It is a little bit more sophisticated then that," Nerra said. "A millennium of fighting left neither side better off. Territories had changed hands, casualties mounted on both sides, and after a thousand years neither side seemed better positioned than at the start."

"Conflict depends on beliefs," she continued, "and a core of elites on both sides had come to see victory as impossible. And because neither side was very smart" - she seemed to smile inwardly - "it took a thousand years for this belief to coagulate and achieve some circulation. They had to kill each other for that long before the simple truth became obvious to them."

"I would put to you," she concluded, "that the pattern is a common one. Conflicts end not because of cease-fires and agreements, not due to clever diplomats or statesmen, though it might appear that way at first glance - or at least, not wholly because of them. No, when peace emerges it is because both sides have come to understand they will never achieve their goals in war. No successful peace treaty has been brokered without that understanding present before the very first meeting. "

"But a thousand years?" Noval asked. "Surely they could have been convinced to come to terms earlier?"

"I very much doubt it," she said firmly. "There were many attempts at peacemaking over the years, and all of them failed. Again, the pattern is a common one; pick a random star system in the galaxy, study its history, and you will find it repeated ad nauseum. Only the final peace negotiations succeeded, because the groundwork, the sense of despair and helplessness among both sides, had been laid by then."

"In fact," Nerra went on, "it may be helpful to dwell on this point a little more. Consider, again, Engirra and Fressia - did you know that, only a hundred years before the conflict ended, negotiations spearheaded by the Republic failed to get both sides to agree to the same border lines that were part of the final peace agreement? The Republic did manage to produce a truce then, only for it to collapse in a matter of months."

"That event bears some historical parallels to the present situation. Why do you suppose those negotiations happened in the first place, given that neither side had any intention of securing peace?"

Noval thought about it. His knowledge of the history of these two planets was superficial, put together from a few stray references. Yet she had given him a hint. "Allies?" he said tentatively.

Nerra nodded with apparent satisfaction.

"Indeed. Both sides needed to purchase weapons from other nations and each could benefit from having the other side look like the aggressor. Both calculated that a failure of negotiations would allow them to play the victim to their own allies, who already viewed the other side with distrust."

"But once they sat across from each other at the negotiating table," she continued, "under the eyes of many diplomatic observers, both sides found it difficult to avoid signing a cease-fire."

"This presents us with two more questions. First, why didn't this cease fire last longer?"

She looked at Noval expectantly.

"A cease-fire requires cooperation," Noval guessed again. His background readings on the Ulth and Plessians led him to understand at least some of the things that can go wrong in an inter-galactic negotiation. "Ships can cross into enemy space accidentally and soldiers often violate border lines by chance. Weapons have been known to fire accidentally. Maintaining a ceasefire requires an ability to coordinate with the other side and prevent mistakes from escalating."

"Indeed," Nerra said, "I think that is right. Which brings us to the second, more important, question: did the Republic do any good by engineering those negotiations and the resulting truce?"

"I don't know," Noval said. He thought about it for a few moments as Nerra looked on in silence. "If the failure of the truce was really inevitable, I suppose the Republic only made things worse. They reinforced the belief, probably present on both sides, that accommodation with the enemy is impossible."

"I agree," Nerra said. "And now you see why you must disabuse yourself of your Jedi impulse to jump headfirst into a conflict and force both sides to the negotiating table. In the long run, you may well end up doing more harm than good. "

**3.**

"Then," Noval said, "you mean to say that we should not attempt to negotiate a truce between the Ulth and the Plessians?"

"I did not say that!"

Nerra smiled indulgently.

"Our discussion up to now was entirely theoretical. I am, in fact, certain," she said, "that it _is_ possible to negotiate a lasting peace on this planet. Can you imagine why?"

Noval took a deep breath.

Perhaps not all is lost, he thought. She seemed to be in a cheerful mood; perhaps once the lesson was over, once she had extracted the requisite apologies and regrets from him, she would show him what it was he could do to stop the war. But he would have to impress her, demonstrate to her some intelligence and creativity. He thought of everything he had learned since arriving on this planet.

"The conflict is driven primarily by the royal families," he began tentatively.

Nerra nodded.

"There is little enmity among the people themselves. I saw men from both sides drinking together when I visited a cantina. There was widespread joy all around at the rumors of a peace accord. It is only the royals, following a code of honor which has largely disappeared from the planet, who are seeking revenge and driving the conflict."

She nodded again and he followed the trail of thought further.

"Suppose we get the negotiations going again. I might try to persuade my master to expand the circle of people at the negotiating table, perhaps to include the leaders of labor unions, civil organizations..."

He ended the sentence with a question mark, uncertain of whether something like this could work.

"It is not a bad idea," Nerra replied, "but it is not enough. Even if your master were to succeed at shaming both sides into a cease fire, the royal families will not find it difficult to restart the war soon enough; some trespass or attack supposedly by the other side can always be orchestrated."

"Perhaps..." Noval searched his mind, "perhaps coups can be engineered. Someone else put on both thrones, or some sort of people's assembly that will rule temporarily…"

Nerra smiled indulgently. "You will not have an easy time putting this plan in motion, my little padawan."

"What shall I do, then?" Noval asked.

"Ah," Nerra said. "Well-"

She paused, looking him over as if she were coming to a decision.

"I think this will be for you alone to figure out."

Noval racked his brain. The two sides were already in the midst of battle; even if they could be persuaded to return to the negotiating table, what then? What more was there to do that his master had not already done?

"I do not know," he said finally.

"All the pieces of the puzzle are before you."

"Perhaps you can give me a hint."

"No," she said, "no hints."

A hint of anger flashed across her face.

"All your decisions have brought you to this point. Do you think I have forgotten your insolence the last time we spoke? Did I not say that I will exact a price upon you?"

"Here it is, then: I will not help you. I will tell you only this: a solution exists."

"I need a padawan who is capable," she went on. "Is that you? I am no longer so certain. This will be a test."

"And you are right to suspect that the war which has already began here will spread if not checked," she added. "I tell you this, if you do not figure out how to stop the fighting, the entire galaxy will be engulfed in flames soon enough."

"Do not bother trying to call me forth unless you succeed," she finished acidly. "I will not appear. You need not return me to Nar Mantell either - simply throw me down the nearest trash chute and the force shall guide my path."

She smiled again and a moment later the stream of red light dimmed and the sounds of whirring ceased. Her image flickered unsteadily and then she was gone, with only the holocron, looking small and dark, remaining before him.

**4.**

He made his way to his master's quarters at the top of the temple. The rest of the padawans were already assembled, Krava shooting him a relieved look as he walked in. Nimbo was in front of the viewscreen, engaged in what appeared to be a shouting match with a robotic assistant.

"Do you know to whom you are speaking? Put me through immediately, you little tin can, or you'll be scrap."

"I sincerely apologize, Master Jedi. His Royal Highness had left me strict instructions he is not to be disturbed. I assure you that your call is extremely important to him and that he will get back to you at the soonest."

The screen turned black just as Nimbo began to bellow something else. Noval sat down discreetly on the mat behind the assembled flock of students. His late arrival did not seem to be noticed. The room was full of nervous energy, the padawans visibly unsettled to watch their master stumble in front of them. Noval looked around, taking in the scene, and, just like that, a plan came fully formed into his mind. It was obvious, crude but it should work, he was certain of it.


	6. An opportunity

**1.**

As always, Eeso was woken up by the gentle rays of sunlight. One of her maids tiptoed past her bed at the appointed hour and parted the velvet curtains, pulling them apart by the length of a finger and letting the pinpricks of light slowly pull Eeso out of her dreams. This task could have been automated but her uncle despised droids, considered all technology a security risk, and was fond of saying that the servants had too much free time on their hands.

She summoned the will to rise and set off to the adjoining steam room where a bath scented with almond oil and lilac petals awaited her. A cup of dark coffee had been laid out next to it, sweetly sugared and sprinkled with a few drops of milk, just the way she liked it, and she took a few quick sips before easing herself into the hot water and letting it drive the slumber from her body.

It was the day they had all been waiting for, the day they would come face-to-face with their enemies. Eeso wondered, not for the first time, what it would really be like - whether it would be akin to looking in a mirror once one got past the differences in dress and custom, or whether she would catch some hints of a monstrous nature absent in her compatriots. The Jedi apprentice she had met weeks ago might be there as well, and if so, that would occasion some awkward explanations.

Her mother had thrown her latest fit about it only last night.

"Those people killed my brother, do you understand? I can't be expected to sip tea and make polite conversation with them, I can't."

"You can and you will," her father replied sternly. "His Imperial Highness commands it." It was the same response he made all the previous times she had worked herself into a storm, and, having said it, he turned and walked out of the room, indicating that the subject was closed.

She stretched in the pleasantly hot water, letting her body relax and feeling every knot in her frame untying. Three decades ago, a surprise attack killed her maternal uncle and her mother had not stopped grieving since; but this occurred long before Eeso was born, and, besides, her own side had broken more than its share of treaties over the years, so she had trouble summoning up the appropriate outrage over the incident.

Finally feeling awake, she glanced at the clock and pulled herself out of the bath, dressing quickly. She was already late for breakfast.

**2.**

"...don't understand how Nicky could agree to it at all," Eeso heard the whimpering voice of her oldest sister as she walked into the drawing room.

"How do you not know this?" she said curtly, sitting herself down on a chair hastily pulled out by one of the servants. "The Jedi contacted the Sarrelonian princeling when hostilities started and persuaded him there was still a way to avert the conflict. We need air support from the Sarrelonians and Nicky had little choice but to accede."

"Nice to see you join us at last," her sister said maliciously, "we were just beginning to anticipate the anguish of spending breakfast without your company."

Eeso smiled slightly; best to leave that without a response. She leaned forward and inspected the inviting assortment of pastries spread out on the table before her.

"Supposedly the Jedi did the same with the Plessians," she went on as she put a chocolate eclair on her plate, "contacting their Vakkarian patrons directly. It might have been the first inspired move he's ever made."

"Hard to believe it's actually going to happen," said one of her cousins across the table.

"I know? Can you imagine it?"

"Us and them in the same room."

"Especially after the last assassination. We may not have proof, but can anyone doubt they had a hand in it?"

"Completely unbelievable."

"Will we have to curtsy?"

"Will they come in those absurd maroon dresses of theirs?"

"Do they even have proper table manners? I heard they refuse to eat with their hands."

"I don't think I'll be able to stop myself from mocking their accents."

"I won't say a word the entire time, I swear. I'll just stare out the window!"

"Nicky will be displeased with that."

"Let Nicky make the conversation!"

A footman standing by the door knocked his heels against the floor. They all turned to look at him with irritation as he did it again, the hard clack of metal resonating against paved wood.

"His Imperial Highness," the footman began to announce, "Nikkolaos the Eight, Autocrat of all Ulth, Duke of..."

"Thank you," the man himself strode into the room, interrupting the recitation as they all stumbled to their feet.

This was unusual: Eeso could not remember the last time her uncle visited them at breakfast. When he needed to see one of them, usually to deliver some peremptory instructions on something or other - her uncle was fond of staging ceremonies at the palace, either to commemorate military victories or honor particularly valorous soldiers, and he had some definite notions of the parts they were to play in these events - they would receive a summons to one of the smaller throne rooms of the palace.

Walking over to Eeso's mother, Nikkolaos kissed her hand before motioning for the rest of them to sit down.

"As always, charming to see you sister," he said.

"Your Imperial Highness, about today…," Eeso's mother looked to be at the start of an anxious monologue, one that would likely segue its way to the subject of her deceased brother.

"It will be a difficult day," Nikkolaos said, cutting her off. "But worry not. All will work out for the best, I assure you."

He looked around with some distaste, seemingly taking stock of them. He must have overheard some of the conversation earlier, Eeso realized. How petty we must all appear to him, she thought, dewy-eyed girls gabbering around a table.

"It will be a difficult day," Nikkolaos repeated.

"When we meet our counterparts," he said the last word with evident distaste, "it is absolutely imperative that you strike up conversations, especially with the male members of the Plessian court. Am I understood?"

They nodded.

"I would like to hear it from each of you."

"Yes, your imperial highness," they all mouthed, their unsynchronized voices mixing almost incomprehensibly.

"Excellent," he said pleasantly. "See that you do not disappoint me. Sister, may I borrow your daughter?"

Without waiting for a reply, he extended his hand to Eeso and, as she rose, led her out of the room.

**3.**

She followed him to the drawing room he had been using to conduct affairs of state since arriving in the city. He motioned for her to sit, and, lowering herself onto one of the plushy cushions which seemed altogether too big for her, she was startled to see that he seemed a little hesitant, even uncertain.

Finally, he sat down at the table across from her and lit up a pipe full of Kashyyk herbs, the sweet smell slowly drifting to her. Imposing portraits took up most of the wall space in the room, Nicky dressed up in his regal finery with swarms of medals leaving little empty space on his chest. The man in front of her seemed rather meager by comparison.

"Eesorith, I know we have not had many familial interactions over the years," he began with a cloying smile, "you know I have been much occupied..."

How odd, Eeso thought. He wants something from me.

"Of course, Your Imperial Highness."

"Please, we are alone here. Call me Nicky."

Eeso winced. She had never heard anyone call the emperor that to his face - not his siblings, not even his wife. It was a running joke among the servants that the empress referred to her husband as "Your Imperial Highness" even in the midst of their lovemaking. It would be an error to disobey this instruction. But it would also be an error to obey too readily.

"Yes...Nicky."

She made the pause between the words overly long, as if his name was stuck in her throat. He leaned back in his chair, apparently satisfied.

"Many here were upset about your excursion the other day," he said easily, "but not me. Why - I did far worse when I was your age..."

He chuckled to himself and paused, likely recalling some of his own childish escapades. He was a second son and, as a consequence, his childhood was a happy one; whereas his brother grew up with the consciousness that he would, one day, bear the weight of the realm on his shoulders, Prince Nikkolaos was known for sneaking out of the palace, forming forbidden dalliances with the servants, and other misbehaviors which ceased with his brother's untimely demise. Eeso suspected he saw a little bit of himself in her.

She formed a half-smile and remained silent. It was generally a good idea to remain silent as much as possible in the emperor's presence.

"I remember when the Jedi first brought up the idea of the two royal families meeting," Nikkolaos continued. "The fool blabbered on and on. He said the conflict had turned into a personal vendetta, that the bloodshed had fueled a deep hatred among us."

"He went on to say that if we could all just mingle together - if we could sit down together for a meal - if we could talk to each other face-to-face - then we would come to see that we are not so different, that we are all both sides of the same coin. But it had to be all of us, every member of the two royal families, not just some envoys, not even the two regents."

"You know what I thought of all that?"

Eeso shook her head.

"As he was going on about it all, I thought...this could be an opportunity."

"Yes," he repeated leaning forward, his eyes suddenly blazing with life, "an opportunity!"

"I told the Jedi that I could not agree more. In fact, I said, while the two royal families would likely behave themselves under his eyes, the true test would be our ability to get along without his presence. I suggested that, at our first meeting, he give us a half-hour alone to test the waters."

"A stroke of genius on my part," Nikkolaos smiled, "And it brings us to the present day. Eesorith, I have a task for you. A request."

Eeso took in a sharp breath. The emperor was not given to making requests.

"I am flattered that you would think of me, your imperial high...Nicky," Eeso made the substitution under her uncle's gently reproachful gaze. "What am I to do?"

"Plainly put," her uncle said, looking searchingly into her eyes, "you are to smuggle weapons into the negotiations."

_Of course._

The past weeks, as the royal court raged over the meetings the Jedi had forced them into, her uncle had maintained a studious calmness, a sort of indifference even. It was very odd, especially given that the emperor was known to have a temper given to uncontrollable eruptions. The assassination of his nephew, the heir-presumptive, was a personal affront, and though he had never been fond of the boy, he must have been enraged. Yet his public persona showed none of that. But now it all made sense, the outward indifference being a mask for a secret plot that would give him the satisfaction he craved.

"How am I to do that?"

"You and your sisters will wear the traditional dresses to the meeting today. You know the kind I mean - puffed up, unwieldy, there is a name for those monstrosities I always forget."

Eeso nodded silently.

"Those dresses are supported by a metal beam running around the waist and to the sides of the dress, keeping them suspended in air. The beam in your dress will be much larger than usual, though not much heavier - my technicians have crafted it out of a specially designed metal - and it will have machetes embedded in it."

"Won't this be detected...Nicky?"

"Indeed, there will be a machine that detects metals, and you will set it off - though your sisters will as well, and they will go on ahead of you. But I'm certain no one will dare to lift your dress."

"And once I am inside?"

"You will be shown beforehand how to extract machetes from the beam. They will be wafer-thin but sharp as a razor. Once the Jedi has departed, some of the men in our party will surround you, seemingly in conversation; shielded from view, you'll extract as many of the machetes as you can before you are noticed."

Her uncle leaned forward.

"You showed some daring the other day, escaping your detail and venturing about the city undetected. You have it in you to do this, I am certain of it."

Eeso looked out the window. It was an incongruously beautiful day, the twin suns shining brightly but not blindingly, the sort of day that would have inspired her younger self to run outside and forget herself in the palace gardens. She wished she could go back in time, or at least that she could feel the easiness she had felt as a child, the sense that life was full of wondrous possibility.

"I cannot force you to do this," the emperor said gently. "If you refuse, I will ask one of your sisters. But they will not handle it as well as you."

She had little doubt of that. Either of her sisters might faint upon hearing of the task at hand.

It wasn't clear how much choice she really had. Her uncle was vindictive and never forgot his grudges, and she shuddered to think of the punishment he would mete out if she refused.

She forced herself to think of it nonetheless. Most likely a forced marriage, perhaps to some aging veteran in need of reward for his service, something to inspire the troops, to show them all that if they are brave enough, one day they might dine at the emperor's table.

"There is a new heir to the throne," her uncle went on. "I vow to you, if you do this, he will marry you. You will be the next queen of the Ulth."

She had to stop herself from wincing. This was not a reward she had any desire to receive.

"And what of afterwards?" she asked, wanting to change the subject. "After they are all dead?"

"Afterwards, we will win," her uncle said confidently. "This war would have petered out long ago were it not for the duty the two monarchies command. Once only we remain, we will draw upon that."

"We will take over the Plessian kingdom without firing a single shot," he continued. "Oh, it will not happen overnight. First I will call upon whatever government emerges to acknowledge my claim as regent of the planet. Our two dynasties branched from the same root and they will not be able to deny me. Then I will make a tour of the Plessian kingdom. Step-by-step, I will remind them of their sacred responsibility to me. It will help that they will be very eager to avoid a war."

What were her options?

Even before her fate would be decided there were more immediate repercussions. If she declined, her uncle's plan would likely fail, she was sure of it; her sisters would not have the nerve to refuse and would crumble under pressure. If she agreed and all went well, she would be complicit in the murder of...how many people? Twenty? Thirty?

On the other hand: if someone were to win the conflict, victory would not come without casualties.

"You hesitate," the emperor said, narrowing his eyes.

She never had much occasion to think about the war, strange as that may sound. It was not something that she could affect, even slightly, and, regardless, honest conversation on the subject was impossible, one had to toe the line or risk punishment even as a member of the royal family. It seemed better to focus her attention on other matters.

She tried to draw on all the political knowledge she had, all the bits and pieces she had heard and cast aside without a further thought.

"What of the Jedi master?" she said, stalling for time.

"Ah," her uncle replied. "We agreed that he will wait in the temple garden with his retinue while the two royal families are left by themselves. Once we have all...mingled...we will walk out and join him there - that was to be the plan."

"The garden is quite some distance away. The Jedi possess many powers but teleportation is not among them. Once he realizes something has gone wrong, he will rush back - but when he arrives, I intend to present him with a fait accompli."

"I thought the Jedi could read thoughts," Eeso countered.

Her uncle shrugged.

"I have heard it said that Jedi powers work best on those whose will is weak. If this Jedi could read my thoughts, he would not have bothered with the negotiations to begin with."

It seemed as if her uncle's plan might work. Would it be so bad if it did, Eeso wondered?

She tried to strip herself of all emotion and lay out the facts clearly in her mind.

_Victory by one side is preferable to interminable war._

Certainly. As things stood, there was no end in sight to the fighting, the present cease-fire a lull which would soon come crashing to an end. The best solution would be a negotiated peace, but the best solution was not on the table, would never be on the table.

Regrets? She would have them either way. In one case, the faces of the victims would be seared onto her conscience; in the other, she would wonder if she doomed her planet to perpetual warfare by her inaction.

_Better us than them._

Better for her, at least.

_We are no worse than they are._

The media was full of stories of Plessian atrocities, children and civilians dying in raids, innocents jailed for crimes they did not commit. "Necessary propaganda," she once heard her father call it. He explained that since most people on either side of the conflict had family on the other side, it was imperative to keep up popular support for the war.

"Besides," he added when she demurred, "they do the same." He showed her Plessian newspapers full of the same kinds of stories, portraying Ulth soldiers as monstrous and bloodthirsty, eager to rape and pillage at every opportunity.

We are all cut from the same cloth, Eeso thought.

_They are likely hatching a similar plan, or would be if they were smart enough._

The enemy was as eager for victory, as strategic and duplicitous.

_The plan itself was sound_.

If she could indeed smuggle weapons into the negotiations, the men of her family would make short work of the Plessians. As for afterwards, her uncle was right - the devotion the people of this planet had to their monarchy bordered on the fanatical. Once they were the only remaining progeny of the dynasty that had spawned both royal families, the Plessians would have no choice but to accept their right to rule.

_There really is no other way._

Her family had revenge in their hearts and they would never accept anything short of victory. So: either they would lose, or the war would continue forever, or they would overcome the enemy.

The last alternative sounded infinitely more preferable.

Yet there was something dirty about it all, something that made her feel as if her hands needed washing. It was one thing to reason in the abstract and another to be in the thick of it, to see the faces of the victims before their slaughter.

_I'm not built for it._

This is not me, she wanted to cry out, this is not my life. She had resigned herself to a lifetime as a member of the imperial court and all that entailed. There was much that was odious, from the marriage of convenience she would likely to be forced into, to the copious amount of children she would be pressured to have; and yet there were consolations to be had: a luxurious lifestyle, an army of servants, ample free time to be by herself. But now she seemed to be thrust into another role entirely, one that fit her as poorly as an ill-made dress.

Her thoughts turned to the Jedi boy from weeks ago and she wondered what he would make of the choice she faced. He seemed a little starstruck with her - at least, he must have been to offer his aid in escaping the planet. Would he come to think his initial impression was wrong, that she was, in the end, far more loathsome than she first appeared to be? No matter, she said to herself, it does not matter.

She pushed the feelings away, one by one, pushed them far into the recesses her mind, and turned her gaze back from the window, looking her uncle squarely in the eyes.

"Very well," she said, "you may rely on me."


	7. Always in motion

Let us suppose that the great empire of China, with all its myriads of inhabitants, was suddenly swallowed up by an earthquake, and let us consider how a man of humanity in Europe, who had no sort of connexion with that part of the world, would be affected upon receiving intelligence of this dreadful calamity. He would, I imagine, first of all, express very strongly his sorrow for the misfortune of that unhappy people, he would make many melancholy reflections upon the precariousness of human life, and the vanity of all the labours of man, which could thus be annihilated in a moment...And when all this fine philosophy was over, when all these humane sentiments had been once fairly expressed, he would pursue his business or his pleasure, take his repose or his diversion, with the same ease and tranquillity, as if no such accident had happened. The most frivolous disaster which could befal himself would occasion a more real disturbance. If he was to lose his little finger to-morrow, he would not sleep to-night; but, provided he never saw them, he will snore with the most profound security over the ruin of a hundred millions of his brethren, and the destruction of that immense multitude seems plainly an object less interesting to him, than this paltry misfortune of his own.

Adam Smith, from _The Theory of Moral Sentiments. _

**1\. **

There was a bleakness to every cantina he had ever set foot in that he couldn't quite put into words. He surveyed the scene around him now: boisterous music, a cheerful if repetitive tune, rings of smoke slowly drifting through the air, loud and raucous laughter which made conversation almost impossible. By all accounts, everything was as it should be; still, he could not help feeling there was a hint of artifice about it all, something that made him wonder whether the people here were truly having a good time or if they were pretending, to fool others or perhaps themselves.

Even so, better to spend the evening here than back at his quarters, alone.

Corporal Van Vodhen pushed the gloomy thoughts out of his mind and took an empty seat at the bar, joining the line of scrunchy-faced aliens drowning their troubles in juma juice. The aphid beside him - was that what they call a Rodian? - seemed to be twitching nervously. Van Vodhen angled himself so that his back was to his neighbor and motioned impatiently to the bartender.

He took a quick look around, his eyes lingering on the dance floor, running quickly over the usual band of Bith and settling on the group of Twilek females moving their bodies gracefully to the music. Unfortunately he was not much of a dancer himself. He had thought of learning in his youth, perhaps taking a class in his spare time, but somehow had never gotten around to it, and now, when his body had grown round and clumsy and his bones sluggish, there seemed to be little point in taking it up.

His drink arrived and, turning his gaze to the endless row of bottles over the bar, he took a few sips and felt the pleasant sensation of warmth spreading through his body. He sat still for a few minutes, sipping slowly and savoring the feeling, until he felt himself starting to get restless.

He took the mail out of the pockets of his overalls and arranged it before him. The same crud as always: requisition orders; notifications of mandatory training; notices that his attendance was required at upcoming meetings; surveys that needed to be filled out; reminders of missed mandatory training; it went on and on, an endless list of bureaucratic obligations that ate up most of his time each day. He crumpled a few of them and threw them in the plasteel cylinder beside the bar. He really should go through these earlier in the day, when he felt calmer, but the mail room was on the way to the exit and he always seemed to stop by on his way out.

A burst of loud laughter across the room drew his attention. He thought he saw a familiar figure and squinting he made out the face of special agent Daven, mouthing something to a circle of admirers gathered around him. Van Vodhen felt a surge of unpleasant surprise in his chest. He had come here, instead of the cantina across from the base, just so he would _not_ run into any of his colleagues. In any case, wasn't Daven sent on an undercover assignment weeks ago? He must have returned recently, for there he was, surrounded by his usual circle of groupies, likely regaling them with stories from his mission.

No one respected a demolitions expert, he thought glumly. Oh he was treated well, everyone agreed he was very good at what he did. At the last status meeting, he challenged anyone in the room to name a war where a soldier or even a team of soldiers made the difference between defeat and victory, and while they all fumbled, he had named five conflicts where the quality of explosives made all the difference. His was the really important work.

He took a gulp of his drink and went back to sorting his mail, ignoring the gasps just emitted by several people listening to Daven. He wouldn't be surprised if the man was giving out military secrets right at this moment, all as a ploy for attention.

There was a note from payroll explaining the new system for entering hours each day. Site 23 would be undergoing repair for the next two months. Next week his division would have an "ugly sweater day." Was Daven ever asked to enter his hours? He obviously did not when he was undercover, fine, but even when he was back on the base, it was somehow incongruous to imagine him filling out status forms. His superiors probably invented some exception for him, and Van Vodhen's mind ran over over the possible reasons that would satisfy the usual objections from the accounting division, who were known for being sticklers in such matters.

He was so absorbed in this that he almost threw it in the trash, the light matte grey envelope sealed with the Plessian coat of arms, tucked inconspicuously among the rest of his mail.

He took a furtive look around as soon as he caught sight of it. Strictly speaking, he should not open the envelope outside the base. But hardly anyone seemed to be nearby, twitchy Rodian excepted, and after a moment's hesitation he reached for the seal. The general's scrawl was instantly recognizable - he had seen those barely legible and elongated letters whenever someone passed around one of these envelopes, usually gloating about receiving orders directly from the commander - and he carefully read and reread the single line of the letter.

"Unsightly Hare - 38:45 - your contact will remark on the size of your pipe - destroy after reading."

A private assignment, coming straight from the general! Unexpected but not unwelcome. His talents would finally be put to good use. He would not be the kind of fool who spilled his secrets to every floozy - he glanced bitterly across the room - no, he would handle this task with the dignity it required. He glanced at his watch: it was only 34:15. The Unsightly Hare was the name of a cantina across town and was a half-hour away at most. He would need to stop somewhere and get a pipe, preferably a large one.

He felt himself almost jittery with excitement.

**2.**

"Danger," master Nimbo said darkly. "We face grave danger ahead."

The padawans, gathered in a circle round their master, looked at each other uncertainly. This was to have been their training time. Most days they were set them to spar against each other while the master strolled about their training hall, offering pointers to some and praise to others. But today he merely sat on the placemat with eyes closed, paying them no heed as they filed into the hall one-by-one.

"I feel it too master," Wrasho said.

Krava and Noval shared a glance and Krava leaned over to whisper sarcastically that Wrahsed seemed perfectly fine just moments ago. Their friend did have a habit of being over-eager at times. But the rest of the padawans were not taking these pronouncements lightly. Each seemed to be peering inside himself, trying to get a whiff of this danger the master was sensing.

Noval felt himself tensing. The upcoming negotiations figured prominently in his plans and it would be disastrous if his master had decided to cancel them. "The future is always in motion, it is a difficult thing to see," Nerra had told him once, apropos of nothing. His plans felt well-formed but there were many uncertainties, blanks he had to fill in based on guesswork. A single miscalculation could send him back to square one.

"Danger," the master repeated again and then lapsed into a long silence.

Noval willed himself to relax. The usefulness of the Jedi ability to sense danger was much overstated; without any hints about the nature of the danger, it provided little guidance when it came time to take action. Besides, everything he knew of his master suggested that danger would only spur him on, make him more eager to continue down his path. Nimbo had prized courage above all else and often told his padawans they must never hesitate to, in his own words, ``jump headlong into the abyss."

They sat uneasily for what felt like an interminably long time when, suddenly, the master raised his head and looked at them as if noticing them for the first time. After a brief glance about the room, he dismissed them with the curt wave of a hand and the padawans quickly rose and streamed towards the exit, most eager to put the awkward events of the past hour behind them. Glancing at his master as he walked out, Noval thought he detected a new gleam in his eyes, a certain hardening of the features.

In the coming days, he was relieved to see his calculation hold true: though the master continued to warn about unspecified dangers, nothing about cancelling the negotiations was ever said. As far as Noval could tell, the only change occasioned by master Nimbo's premonition was the issuance of regular warnings to the padawans, to the effect that they must all exercise due diligence. These were always solemnly received, though what form this diligence should take was never entirely clear.

**3.**

His contact was a shabbily-dressed messenger boy, tall and lanky with frizzled hair. He looked to be no more than seventeen. Van Vodhen wondered briefly at his affiliation - the boy was clearly no military recruit - perhaps the general's relative or his laundry boy? But he had no chance to inquire after the matter: after mumbling something nervously about a pipe, the boy handed him an envelope and excused himself.

The corporal frowned as he read the general's next missive. It was no easy task, to construct an explosive device of that magnitude, all from untraceable components. He could do it without much difficulty in his lab, but to create it alone, at his private residence, from only over-the-counter materials?

Well, he wasn't first in his class nothing. He could see why the general turned to him. This was his chance to shine. He twirled his flowery mustache gently as his mind wandered.

It was easy enough to find materials that explode when mixed together; the trick was always to control the process to make the explosion of just the right size trigger at just the right time. An explosion of that size would need some very volatile reagents, things that would not be easy to handle safely in the lab, let alone at his home.

He had less than two weeks to do it.

He laughed out loud at the sheer audacity of the request. It was just like the general. Though he had never met the man - or even been in the same room with him - Van Vodhen heard many times he was given to having unreasonable expectations of his subordinates.

But instead of feeling dispirited by the task at hand, the corporal found himself in paradoxically good spirits. Though he had no idea how he would accomplish the task, he had a hunch that he would prove equal to the challenge. The sheer impossibility of it spurred him on. He looked around the cantina with glee and rubbed his hands together excitedly, likely looking very foolish to anyone who happened to glance at him just then, and not caring one whit about it.

**4.**

"I feel underdressed," Krava said as she caught sight of her reflection in one of the crystals embedded within the walls of the temple. She turned and twirled slightly, as if hoping that her Jedi robe would look more colorful from a different angle.

They had just glimpsed some of the Ulth royals entering the temple decked in impressively elaborate apparel: brightly colored dresses, a medley of tunics, overcoats, breeches, frocks, all layered on top of each other and somehow looking elegant all the same. Their robes felt dull and grey by comparison.

Wrasho shrugged. "Many throughout the galaxy feel awe at the sight of a Jedi. It is they who should envy us."

Krava did not seem convinced, but apparently had little desire to pursue it further. She turned to Noval, who had been walking beside them and had fallen back slightly, just beginning to turn away so that he could head back to his quarters.

"Not coming?" she asked, a little surprised.

Noval looked at her with hesitation. "I'm not one for small talk, I'm afraid."

"And I am?" Wrasho said indignantly.

"The master will be irritated," Krava added.

"Will he even notice?" Noval said dismissively. "I don't even know what we are supposed to be doing."

"I believe our instruction was to _mingle_," Krava said, smiling. "Is that proving too much for your Jedi talents?"

"It seems so," Noval said, wishing to bring the conversation to an end. He turned around only to come face to face with the master himself.

Fortunately, Nimbo had either not heard their conversation or had chosen to disregard it.

"Come, my padawans," he said, putting his hands on their shoulders and looking straight ahead. "Let us join the proceedings. Be at your most vigilant for danger awaits us all."

He led them into the sanctuary of the temple and Noval had no choice but to follow at his master's side.

**5.**

He told his superior officer that he would be taking leave, inventing an improbable story about an aunt who passed away without warning and a funeral he was now obliged to organize. Infuriatingly, the man made only a semblance of an effort to persuade him to stay, pleading with him for fifteen minutes at the most before signing his leave paperwork. Did he not realize how crucial Van Vodhen was, especially so close to a possible outbreak of hostilities?

He had barely slept over the past fortnight. Strangely enough, he felt as if he did not need sleep now, as if it somehow interfered with his natural creative process. He limited himself to a few occasional naps. Time seemed to speed up, days felt as if they passed instantly in bursts of creativity.

He had to make some unorthodox choices in his design. First, there would be no way about it: the bomb would have to rely on ignited plasma. Plasma was identical throughout the galaxy and would be completely untraceable. Unfortunately, plasma was notoriously volatile and he had to design special circuits to stabilize the mixing and control the explosion rate: three knots of carbonite nanofoam, arranged in a precisely proportioned triangle, each activating the next via short pulses of light before the plasma could begin to ignite.

The only problem was that he had neither the plasma nor the carbonite nanofoam.

But the general asked and the general provided. The letter he received that day from the messenger boy established a channel of communication: he could drop off letters in a safe-deposit box across town and receive a reply stowed in the same box in a matter of hours. His mustache tingled at the realization that, each day, the general was willing to interrupt whatever he was doing to devote time to his project.

He outlined his need for plasma and nanofoam and received the briefest of replies that same evening - "Understood. Will look into it." The next morning he found a inconspicuous jar in the box, something that looked as if it might contain someone's lunch, and when he opened it he saw the materials he required, secured according to the instructions he had provided.

That was a week ago. He had set himself to work with abandon and it had been a genuine pleasure to build the nanofoam contraptions and watch them in action, so delicate and yet so deadly and precise. The smallest mistake, a stray hair or a trembling of the hands, would have resulted in his death, alongside all the other tenants of his building. But his hands were steady and he felt sure, confident as he plunged ahead with the work.

He felt his feelings rise to a crescendo as the device slowly edged towards completion. There was no way to test the bomb, of course, but he could test each component, each subsystem to see that they all performed according to specifications, using simulations to validate the final product. Every passed test left him in a rush of excitement.

And yet when he was finally finished, when the last test had been passed and the final simulation returned results within acceptable ranges, all he felt was relief. Struggling to stand, the first thing he did was collapse on his bed in what he thought would be a short nap but which led him to awaken only on the following day.

It was only then that he allowed himself to feel pleased for the first time. He admired his handiwork, gazing lovingly at the wonderwork of engineering in front of him, and reflected that this is why he was alive - to create, to invent, to do the things that no one else could do.

Well...perhaps a few others could have done it as well, he grudgingly admitted to himself. His demolitions instructors at the academy might have pulled it off. Still, he knew of no one who recommended using plasma for small hand-held explosives like this one. Besides, the idea of stabilizing it with communicating knots of nanofoam was new, was his own, was no one else's.

He smiled and closed his eyes and imagined his creation in action.

The smile froze on his face before being replaced by a more neutral expression. It was war after all, and such things were unavoidable. He was a soldier, a loyal servant of the crown, and he had his duty to think of. He turned his eyes to the portrait of the Plessian monarch hanging on the wall. Duty was not always easy or convenient. His father, were he alive now, would be proud of him, would smile and pat him on the shoulder and congratulate him for a job well-done.

He forced his attention onto other matters. When had he eaten last? He couldn't remember. But the first order of business was to deliver the device.

He packed it in an ordinary-looking box of cardboard, holding it under his arm as he hailed a hovercar to take him across town. On his way, he agonized what to put in his final report and ultimately decided on something terse, something in the general's own style: "Finished. Pleasure to serve. -VV." The general would remember that_._

The final step was disappointingly anti-climactic. He put the device in the safe deposit box along with his note, locked it, and stood in front of it for a moment or two. There was nothing more to be done. He felt as if someone should congratulate him now, as if _something_ should happen. But there was only him and the box. After a minute or so, he stepped out back onto the street.

He was in the mood for a long, roundabout walk home. But it was rainy and the mid-day darkness blanketed the planet while he had been inside. In his haste to deliver the bomb, he had not put on the right shoes and his feet felt dank and uncomfortable as he tried to walk around the puddles. Should he flag a hovercar to take him home? None seemed to be around. With a sigh, he set out in the direction of his apartment.

For the first time, he considered the meaning of his project. He had been so caught up in the technical work that he had spared little time for anything else. In hindsight, it didn't augur anything good. It is to be war once again, he thought glumly; like many, he had been hopeful about the last round of negotiations. Well-then, perhaps this time victory shall be at hand, he said to himself without much believing it.

It was a funny profession, being a merchant of death. You work in your laboratory, putting your heart and soul into your creations, these marvels of engineering elegance, and then someone uses them them to maim, kill, and disfigure. So easy to forget, to put it all out of your mind as you go about your day.

The Jedi say there is no death, there is only the force; but he did not find this compelling, it gave him no comfort to think of himself becoming part of an astral, incomprehensible entity - no more comfort, at least, than knowing that his body would one day decay, that worms would chew through his corpse, that his body would be torn apart and mixed up in the cosmic process of life and creation.

No, much better to believe in the endless cycle of death and rebirth, as the old religions prophesied - mistakes in one life fixed in the next, an eternal cycle of striving and ambition and work. It was a more comforting story, with a sense of purpose about it all. .

It was almost impossible to believe in death sometimes, he thought, to imagine that he would one day cease to exist. He had no trouble believing that his body would degrade but what of his spirit?

Some would deny such a thing existed. But was he really not very different from a robot, or, for that matter, any one of the computing devices he built each day? Surely he was very different - for one thing, he experienced pain and pleasure, and that meant he was no mere a collection of wiring, electrical or biological.

He could not believe that a computer or a chunk of rock experienced life the way he did. No, the fact that he _felt _\- either pain or pleasure or other sensations - implied there was more to him than just connections of matter. Perhaps his body was a shell, a connection for something else, something he might as well call a spirit.

And it was impossible to believe his spirit would die. Hadn't his spirit remained unchanged in all the years he had been alive? His body had changed, yes, but his experience of being, that was exactly the same.

A hovercar was approaching in the distance, its bright lights seemingly aimed at him.

No, his spirit was another thing entirely, it could not be altered by mere changes in matter. Affected, yes, changed no. At the core, then, he had to be immortal. What would happen when he died? He hadn't the slightest idea, but he was certain that what he was would not be destroyed, could not be destroyed.

He saw the hovercar closer now and imagined the force it exerted on collision, tons of steel and glass rushing forward at great velocity, crushing against bone and tendon and ligament. Not death, he said to himself, not in any real sense, only the separation of his being from the flesh.

He felt an overwhelming sense of happiness at having understood this. How had it not occurred to him before? He could face the thought of death head-on knowing that it would not be the end, merely the shedding of a form. Nothing to fear, he said to himself, I have nothing to fear. He felt himself released of all anxiety, the usual litany of fears and worries and resentments far from his mind. It would all work out in the end, not only for him but for all sentients who had ever been alive, and that was wonderful, that was all he could ever hope for. Almost by impulse, he stepped into the path of the hovercar, smiling, happy, at peace, without a single care in the world.

**6.**

Noval's plan was a crude one: a bomb placed beneath the temple would explode, destroying the temple sanctuary housing the negotiations and killing all the people inside. He spent the better part of the night creeping through the cellars to set it up in the right spot. It was something no Jedi would ever do. It was also the right choice.

Everything he had learned on this planet pointed to the cessation of conflict once the royal families were out of the way. It was an enormous act of good he was about to do, not only for the people here but for the galaxy. He only regretted that he could not tell anyone, that he would have to keep all this between him and Nerra, who had taken so many steps towards the dark side that unburdening to her would be of no use, she was beyond understanding the hesitation and nervousness he felt now.

Perhaps one day, when the planet had been at peace for some years, he could find Eeso and tell her the story. He was sure she would understand: the upcoming war seemed to weigh heavily on her when they last spoke and she was analytical enough to understand this was the only choice. He had only her name and occupation to go by, but he was certain that should be enough; if he was not shy about delving into people's minds, he would track her down in time.

He had no wish to harm his fellow padawans or his master. No doubt, that was Nerra had intended from the start: she had likely foreseen the solution he would settle on and calculated he could not do it without killing his master. She was goading into an act so unsettling that he would never again find peace among the Jedi.

But by a miraculous stroke of luck, the final schedule included time for the two royal families to be alone with each other, no Jedi present. He was almost mad with relief when he saw it. Discussions between the master and his diplomatic counterparts made it clear that the schedule would be followed to the letter, minute for minute. Thank the Force - it seemed that sometimes the universe was on his side after all. He timed the bomb to go off precisely half-way through the period. Lest he have cold feet, he included no option to stop the countdown remotely.

It is done, he thought on waking up that morning, there was nothing he could do to stop or alter the course of events now. He was glad for it now as his master led him into the room where the royals were gathered, where he would have to look at the people he was about to kill.

He followed his master around the sanctuary, making no effort to participate in the pleasantries. Twenty-six Plessians and thirty-one Ulth were here now, most of them glaring suspiciously at one another. Fifty-seven total, a small price to pay to end a millenium-old conflict that might soon spiral to include the rest of the galaxy.

_Fifty-eight_, he corrected himself, recalling the Plessian demolitions expert who unwittingly constructed the bomb for him. He felt a brief pang of guilt at the man's death, but it had to be done, he could ill-afford to leave loose ends lying around. At the very least, it had been as kind of a death as he could muster.

He kept his eyes down and made a deliberate effort to shut out the thoughts that were floating about the room. There was something dreadful about seeing these people, knowing they would soon disappear from the world thanks to his efforts. At first opportunity, he would try to either slip outside or at least into some a deserted corner of the hall. Unfortunately, Nimbo's hand was still on his shoulder and Noval had little choice but to follow his master as he weaved in and out of conversations. The master was hard at work, sparking discussions between royals from the warring factions, gathering them together and asking questions to get the talking started, leaving as soon as the dialogue had some momentum.

It was this way that he came face-to-face with her.

If there was one person he had not expected to see here, it was Eeso. She stood barely a foot away from him, looking faintly absurd in a hideously broad dress. It had taken him several confused moments to realize who it was that standing before him, so different did she appear now. Her face was brightly powdered and her motions were stiff and mechanical, no doubt due to the weight of the monstrosity of silk and cotton she was wearing. He opened his mouth to say something only to close it again.

He had thought of her often since their meeting. She had seemed so wonderfully alive; it was a ridiculous thing to feel, he knew, for were we not all alive to the same degree? And yet there was something more to her, though he could not say what it was. Perhaps his feelings were only a reaction to his constant interactions with other Jedi who were in the habit of suppressing their emotions and never allowed themselves to feel too deeply.

In hindsight, he should have been able to guess the rough outlines of what it was she was hiding. The biological tracker on her hand; the security detail after her; his sense that there was something she was not telling him. She was clearly no mere embassy worker.

His master had been exchanging pleasantries with the man standing beside her and Noval noticed with a start that it was the Ulth emperor, looking a lot less statuesque than his portraits but recognizable nonetheless. He wondered how important Eeso was in the Ulth hierarchy, how close to the throne and its machinations. He had things he wanted to say to her - though he could not say what, exactly, they were - but there was no possibility of interrupting the emperor. Noval tuned into the conversation briefly, but it was mere small talk, platitudes about peace and talk of the weather, crops, and interplanetary trade.

He looked at her intensely and she did not avert her gaze. There was some emotion in her, some hint of dread. She did not look happy to see him. It was tempting to read her mind but Nimbo was close at hand and Noval was not sure whether his master would detect anything amiss.

Suddenly the thought struck him: she would die. Involuntarily he pictured what the explosion would do to her, to everyone in the room, and felt a wave of nausea rising within him.

He forced himself to imagine a scale: fifty-eight lives on the one side, a galaxy-wide war on the other. He had no choice but to proceed with the scheme as planned.

His master motioned someone from the Plessian court to join them and, after a few more phrases, moved away pulling Noval alongside him. Even as he moved, he felt her presence behind him, her eyes directed at his back. Can lives even be compared, he wondered now, wasn't there was something grotesque about weighing human lives against each other? Every sentient was unique, incomparable to the rest.

As his master began a new conversation, he continued this train of thought. Did we not remember the past from from the people who gave it character, those chosen few who altered the galaxy and made it sing of their exploits? How much do the lives of such people weigh when compared against the mass of routine and undifferentiated living?

Another thought occurred to him: was he not, in a sense, taking away the choices of the people here on this planet? There was the choice to obey those in authority and the choice to rebel against tradition, instead to place your allegiance in the principles fairness and reason; the choice to seek revenge and the choice to put it aside; no choice was without its consequences, each one leading down winding alleys of repercussions. He had sought to make things easy for the people here, but perhaps that was cheating, perhaps there was something wrong with robbing them of the dignity to shoulder their own burdens.

Nerra had said to him, not long ago, that nations _achieve definition_ in conflict; might not the same be said of people? He shut his eyes and imagined a peaceful galaxy without Eeso; and then he pictured a galaxy torn apart by war, a backdrop against which he and Eeso and others would struggle and define themselves, each deciding whether he would be a hero or a traitor or a coward or a martyr. Was it so obvious that the former was preferable?

But there was nothing to be done about it now, the bomb was set to explode and it was far too late. Or was it? For one thing, he could announce to them all what it was he had done. His master would renounce him and they would execute him in days at the most, but her death might be averted. Or he could search the possibilities, find a less desperate scheme. But first he had to decide whether that was at all desirable, whether he should proceed as he planned, whether sentient lives ought to be weighted against one another as if they were on a grocer's scale. He raised his eyes for the first time and scanned the hall, looking into the faces of the people here.

And then he made his choice.


	8. Fragile things

His master was just coming to the end of a speech, the same one he had been giving, with minor variations, since his arrival on the planet: paeans to peaceful coexistence, effusive praise for the courage of laying down your arms, exhortations to think of the world their children will inherit. The royals on both sides were listening politely and, although a few were nodding solemnly, most were whispering to each other with condescending smiles on their faces.

If only the explosive device could be disabled remotely. Ironically, he had ensured it could not in an attempt to save himself from the sort of doubts he was now going through. "Plans are fragile things," he remembered Nerra saying to him once and seeming to take an odd delight in it, "and life often dashes expectations to the ground."

He strained his mind. There must be something he could do, some way to stop the impending explosion. There simply wasn't enough time to descend into the temple cellar and make his way to the bomb itself; it had taken him hours of crawling through the grimy mud the previous night and now he had ten, fifteen minutes at the most.

There was a polite round of applause. His master had bowed deeply, his speech apparently concluded, and looked around the room, perhaps hoping that his words would set off a spontaneous dialogue. After a few awkward moments of silence, he motioned the padawans to follow him and began to make his way towards the exit. The royals on either side did not seem to be looking forward to their time together, the women especially seeming to wear looks of agony. He looked around and caught sight of Eeso almost in a corner, looking anxious and pained. The padawans were streaming out of the sanctuary and through the long corridors to the gardens outside; noticing himself falling behind, Noval hurried to fall in step.

He had read the mind of the Plessian munitions expert several times and while he had not _tried _to retain any of the technical knowledge, some of it stuck. He had not only seen through the man's eyes, he had felt what it was like to be him, experiencing his thoughts and impulses as if they were his own. He remember now the feverish flash of insight that seemed to send the Plessian into a fit of euphoria, the knots of nanofoam that were the linchpin of the device, delicate and beautiful and very unstable.

He could try overloading the emitter in his lightsaber. It would fry the machinery inside to a crisp but in the process a pulse would be created; and if this pulse came through at just the right, resonant frequency, the nanofoam within the bomb would diffuse and the knots would collapse in a matter of microseconds.

They padawans were passing through the stone archway leading to the gardens, the master walking slightly ahead of them. Noval did his best to shut out all notice of his surroundings, moving forward mechanically as his mind raced. It all depended on the order in which knots were reached by the pulse. If the knot which connected the plasma chambers were to collapse first, the walls of the chambers would puncture and the plasma would mix, likely leading to an explosion several times bigger than planned. If any of the other knots were reached first, the detonation circuit would malfunction and the bomb would not go off when the countdown was reached.

How did he position the bomb, what was its orientation relative to his location now? He did not remember. He pulled and tugged at his memory, all with no effect. There were too many turns inside the cellar and besides, he had not taken much notice of the angle at which he secured the bomb to the cellar floor.

He had two chances out of three, and in the present circumstances this seemed to be as good odds as he could hope for.

Noval hesitated. So much depended on making the right decision. Was there a better way, something he could do to increase the odds? Minutes had already passed since he had left the hall. Most of the padawans were now sitting on the benches beneath the clumps of trees, idly chatting, while the master sat apart from them with his hands outstretched and his eyes closed. A few of the most earnest padawans were setting up to meditate beside the master. He had not been mindful of the time and he was not sure how many more minutes remained until the detonation.

He considered again telling his master what it was that he had done; but the truth was that it was already too late. The right time to make this decision was back in the temple sanctuary. As things stood, if they were to head back inside the temple now, the bomb might go off by the time they reached the royal families.

Again his mind went over the space of possibilities and again he came up blank.

He pulled out his lightsaber then thought better of it: best not to seem out of place. Taking a furtive look around, he was relieved to see no one seemed be paying him any attention; still, he slid the lightsaber back at his waist with a mock carelessness, as if he was about to do a sparring exercise only to change his mind. Using the force, he tweaked a few of the strings of energy within, feeding power to the circuit which powered the crystal within, gently, steadily, until the emitter was putting far more heat onto the wires than they could handle.

Two chances out of three. It was a funny thing, how much could depend on the throw of the dice. There were many lives he could live but he would only live out one and it would be decided now, by this little bit of randomness. Comforting to imagine a grand plan behind it all, all the little chances and coincidences adding up to a grand purpose, but the very notion strained belief.

He wondered briefly if the galaxy would be better or worse for it had he not become a Jedi.

It was a bit of a coincidence itself, his joining the order, for the planet where he grew up was on the fringes of the outer rim and Jedi were unheard of there. He was raised in an orphanage, never knowing who his parents were or even whether they were still alive. The other kids had called him "witch boy," not unkindly, for all the times he had made objects tremble from afar with a furrow of the brow or a wave of the hand. His abilities were evidence he was god-touched, or so his elders told him; one day, he would become a shaman, for who better to divine the intent of the spirits than their favorite?

He accepted this at the time without much thought. Looking back, those days in the orphanage might have been the happiest of his life. He lived in a world of certainties and his path had been set; he had little desire for anything more. It was so very unlike his time in the temple, full as it was of confusion and striving and uncertainty.

He might have never been given to the order were it not for a passing trader who noticed him levitating a pebble for the amusement of his friends. That trader came to see the owner of the orphanage that night and left with Noval as his slave (on the far fringes of outer rim, everything had a price and humans were no exception). The owner named what he thought was an extraordinary sum for the special boy, and was surprised to receive it in full after a minimal amount of haggling. The same trader took him to Dantooine and turned him over to the Jedi some weeks later, collecting a hefty finder's fee in the process.

And now here he was, trying to disable an explosion he himself had set in motion in an attempt to sway galactic politics. If that trader had looked the other way, he would still be on his homeworld, likely apprenticed to a tribal sorcerer and spending his days learning incantations and memorizing tribal lore. He wondered if that might not have been the better outcome after all.

The lightsaber began humming lightly at the edge of hearing. He had throttled the energy so that the overload would occur when the beads of energy vibrated at just the right frequency. Only moments remain, he thought, and then all would be decided. His hands found the hilt of his saber and he could not help gripping it tightly.


	9. An event of moderate probability

I have often thought to myself how it would have been if, when I served in the First World War, I and some young German had killed each other simultaneously and found ourselves together a moment after death. I cannot imagine that either of us would have felt any resentment or even any embarrassment. I think we might have laughed over it.

C.S. Lewis, _Mere Christianity_.

**1.**

How refreshing it was to be in front of an audience that was hanging on to his every word. No more bored sideways glances or polite, absent-minded smiles; he saw only enthusiastic nods, wide-eyed open faces, and even the occasional stream of tears.

"We all love the same children, cry the same tears, hate the same war..."

It always puzzled him, the way clans of sentients all over the galaxy were wont to imagine their neighbors, microscopically different, as their opposites. He had, by now, learned to tell the difference among Ulth and Plessians but when he had first arrived it was far from easy to keep the distinctions straight in his mind.

"We cannot afford to let this let planet flow with blood and tears..."

He was interrupted by a round of raucous applause and paused to gather his breath.

He had been as surprised as anyone at how smoothly everything had turned out. He recalled his panic, on that fateful day, when he heard the blast in the garden and opened his eyes to see the temple dome cave in. He rushed back to what remained of the sanctuary and plunged straight into the cloud of smoke, only pausing briefly to repel the bilious particles of dust.

It was to no use, of course: they were all dead. Little identifiable remained, the bodies shredded by the explosion; a royal insignia here or there was all that was left. There must have been a bomb, but nothing seemed to remain of it either. Everything was lost.

Was this the danger he had been feeling all this time?

There was something else he suddenly sensed, a smoke-like whiff that streamed out of the large hole in the middle of the sanctuary. He walked over and, kneeling beside it, peered inside. There was no mistaking what it was.

Dark energy. Nimbo had only sensed it only once before, back in his days as a padawan, when, in the midst of a routine reconnaissance mission, he stumbled on an old Sith temple. It was entirely unplanned. Together with his master, he had demolished it with an improvised explosive that very day, but not before he felt the lure of the energy emanating within.

It had the feeling of unalloyed power, repulsive and intoxicating. He longed to get away from it, to be as far from that temple as possible; and, at the same time, he could barely steady his feet to stop himself from walking inside. It was as if some part of himself, hidden, was slowly coming to the surface. Wordlessly the temple spoke reprovingly of promises half-fulfilled, made promises of long-lost mysteries lying in the dark, ambitions consummated, doubts erased, chains broken. It took all the willpower he had to stand calmly beside his master as they constructed the explosive.

What he felt that day as he gazed into the hole in the midst of the collapsed sanctuary was much weaker. There was only a trace of it, barely detectable, and it did not rouse his being. Still, it was undeniably dark energy, and, as he probed it with the force, the inevitable conclusion came bearing down upon him like a weight. The Sith were alive and present in the galaxy.

No doubt, this bomb was an attempt to take out one of the order's most capable masters.

He would need to alert the council immediately. The implications were grave. For one thing, with the leadership of this planet dead, he was certain both sides would quickly descend into open warfare. More importantly, the Sith were not only present in the galaxy, but they were clearly not content to lie in the shadows. Urgently, the order would need to prepare for the coming war.

Months had passed since that day and, while he was still troubled by it all, he was happy to see his initial guesses were mistaken. The Sith attacks he imagined to be imminent did not come. Were they lying in wait after all, biding their time, waiting for an opportune moment?

The news that both royal families had been murdered by the Sith led to outpourings of grief throughout the planet. The towns began to be blanketed in funeral processions; he had thought it politic to be present at some of these himself, somber, mournful marches with the participants holding the pictures of the victims in the air as they walked. Often these had an unfortunate tendency to turn to violence; those first first few days were full of chaos as it was unclear who was in charge of either nation. Many cities degenerated into looting. Amid competing claims to power from a bevy of royal bastards on both sides, the militaries on both sides formed provisional governments and restored order.

At that point he had expected the two nations to find their way to open warfare. Viewing his mission as hopeless, he stayed on the planet largely out of inertia. Along with his padawans, he was housed in the upper reaches of the temple, rooms unharmed by the blast, and the priests made no efforts to evict them. He wondered each day if it was time to pack up and travel back to Coruscant to seek the council's guidance.

To his surprise, neither side made any move to attack the other. On the contrary, he was soon approached by emissaries from both of them, asking him to preside over a restart of the negotiations. For a while, his role seemed to be that of a messenger, as both Ulth and Plessians had him relay their missives back and forth. Finally, suitable arrangements had been reached and and a series of in-person meetings arranged.

This time the negotiations were to be a private affair; in any case, all the diplomatic observers present for the last round left the planet long ago. They met in one of the small rooms with a view of the ruins of temple sanctuary. Again he expected the worst and again his expectations were confounded. On the very first day, he was startled to see the ambassadors cordially introduce each other and extend condolences, each dwelling at length on the tragedy experienced by the other. What a change from the previous round when his most pressing task was to police the contempt that flowed across the table.

Once the conversation had started, it quickly turned to bargaining and he found himself with little to do. He was shocked to see how quickly the issues were resolved: borders (each side would keep the territory it controlled and financially compensate all who would need to relocate), water resources, economic trade, prisoners of war. He sat there like a lump as the envoys made offers and counteroffers.

And now here he was, lecturing the new leaderships of both nations, just before the agreement was to be signed. Strictly speaking, they were signing not a peace treaty but a "memorandum of understanding" outlining the terms which would be fleshed out in yet another round of the negotiations. Apparently, as Nimbo discovered much to his surprise, treaties tended to be excruciatingly wordy, going into the thousands if not tens of thousands of pages. Today they would agree to an informal understanding which would only later be turned into a treaty. And yet everyone understood that all the important issues had been resolved, that all that remained was a job for the lawyers.

"You are destined to live together on the same soil, in the same land. You, the soldiers who have returned from battle stained with blood, you will say to each other: enough! Enough of the blood and tears…"

He was interrupted by another round of boisterous applause.

The ways of the force are beyond understanding, he reflected now as he looked over his joyful audience. The decimation of both royal families turned out to be for the greater good. Had it not happened the very people cheering now would be making grim preparations for the oncoming slaughter. He wondered if his true destiny was to act as a magnet for the Sith, to bring peace as the target of a failed assassination that, miraculously, made everything fall into place.

He entertained these thoughts for a few moments before dismissing them. Such speculations were futile and, besides, the order's traditions did not encourage them. Was it not the height of arrogance to imagine that he, a Zabrak male who had been alive for only a few decades, could divine the aims of the force, peer into the very mysteries which drove the universe? No, surely he would only fathom it at all when he was part of the force himself, when his body had turned to dust.

For now, all he could do was immerse himself in the Jedi practices, just as he had always done. He would stay on the planet a little longer while the full treaty was being negotiated; both sides had requested it and he had no other pending assignments from the council. Besides, he wanted to see things through. He felt no fear at the prospect of fighting the Sith and he considered the possibility of his own death without anxiety. His thoughts were steady, centered on the knowledge that he was fulfilling his destiny, that he stood firmly on the path that had been his own since the day he set foot in the Jedi temple.

**2.**

He ambled down the streets oblivious to the celebrations taking place all around him. The city was thronging with people, even at this late hour long after the sunsets; most were loitering on the sidewalks or clumping together at the street corners, sharing drinks and screaming loudly amid a general sense of mirth.

It was not so much that he missed her; after all, he hardly knew her. They had spent only a single evening together. Still, he had felt in her a kindred spirit, and the overwhelming emotion he felt now was an unbearable sense of sadness. The galaxy felt emptier, somehow lacking in color.

He had retraced the path the two of them had walked - starting from the noisy cantina, over the ancient bridges, and finally until the spot where they said their goodbyes. He walked slowly and though he began when the oppressive heat of the day was hard upon him, it was dark and frigid by the time he had finally finished. It was an act without any useful purpose and yet it made some knot in his chest unwind. What other weapon, besides memory, was there against the brutality of life and death?

His plan went off without a hitch. He had guessed that once the explosion removed the royal families and their blood feud out of the picture, peace would emerge. Not only would the explosion eliminate the major driver of the conflict - the desire for honor and revenge that drove the royals on both sides - but the two nations would be given a common foe by the supposed Sith attack, and the governments that emerged would be weak, insecure, unlikely to go against popular sentiment, which favored peace on both sides.

It was a significant gamble. Still, doing nothing would have led to certain war, and this plan seemed to at least have a chance of averting it. Besides, Nerra told him a solution existed, and she seemed to think it was within his power to find it. What other possibility could she have had in mind?

All his calculations came true. Perhaps, he thought, he should be feeling proud of the lives he had saved. But he found himself unable to entertain any thoughts in that direction. His mind automatically turned to Eeso, and he remembered her as she was, sharp, reflective, struggling against the bonds which reined her in.

He kept on standing at the spot where the two of them had parted, looking around uncertain of what to do next. His thoughts drifted to Reena, and he thought of her too as she was in their early days at the academy, questioning, incisive, with a lively spirit so opposed to the stoic demeanor of the masters. Much like Eeso, in fact.

What a contrast, he thought bitterly, to the letters he had been exchanging with Reena over the past months. He had sought hard to engage her in an attempt to rekindle their friendship; but her letters seemed to lack any discernible feeling, being largely composed of variations on the familiar Jedi platitudes. She always wrote at length of her archaeological work with master Shayn, the manual labor that was supposedly good for her spirit. Slowly, their correspondence dwindled into nothingness. The old Reena seemed to be gone.

Noval felt as if he had aged decades in the past months. How much of all that transpired, he wondered, had been foreseen or even engineered by Nerra? It was impossible to answer. But one thing was certain: her future rested in his hands. He could choose to never activate the holocron again. For all of her bluster - ``throw me down the nearest trash chute,'' she had said - it was within his power to derail her plans, whatever they might be. He had no idea how to destroy a holocron, but supposing he bound it to a stone and found an ocean to throw it in?

It was something to consider.

He turned the idea over in his mind. If he threw Nerra and her damned holocron into the ocean, what would he do with the rest of his life? He felt less desire to be a Jedi than ever. But what else was there? If he kept on at his current path, one day he might become a middling Jedi, which was, in the end, perhaps not so bad. For all its flaws, the order surely did more good than harm.

It was a perfectly acceptable way to spend the remainder of his days in the galaxy.

He looked in the direction Eeso set off after they parted. Perhaps, he said to himself, he would confront Nerra one last time. In any case, he felt a violent desire to be somewhere else, anywhere else. He turned back in the direction of the temple. Maybe he would seek out his master for some meetings. He would certainly require much guidance from the man if he set himself down the path to becoming a mediocre Jedi.

**3.**

"I will tell you a story," Nerra said as soon as the rays coming from the holocron cohered into a shape. "It is the story of my homeworld, the planet where I spent a happy childhood before the order became deplorably aware of my existence."

Noval tried to speak but she paid him no heed.

"Almost a hundred years before I was born a general named Valoris staged a popular and successful coup. The king he deposed was young and inexperienced and had plunged our planet into many deadly wars; he had no patience for detail, little interest in managing the treasury or delving into policy matters. War and hunting were his chief pleasures."

Noval's further attempts to get a word in met with a similar lack of response. He sighed. It seemed he would have to listen to the story.

"Still, despite his faults, to many the king was something of a sacred being. Many would have gladly laid down their lives for him. Valoris understood this. He knew that, though his soldiers were perfectly loyal, they would hesitate to murder the king. And so he did it himself."

"Valoris strangled him in the throne room," Nerra continued, "supposedly with his bare hands. Once the king was dead, Valoris brought his sword down upon the king's wailing wife. It is said that her death was...messy."

Noval made a face. Why was she telling him this?

"It was only then that the soldiers who had fought to get to the throne room with Valoris joined in the slaughter. They understood that their fates were sealed, that there was no turning back. The king's brothers and nephews were next, then still more distant relatives."

"Many stories are told about the rivers of blood that ran from the palace that day." Nerra paused. "Probably vastly exaggerated. But let me get to the point. Valoris made a mistake, a terrible, horrible mistake for which his name will be forever cursed on my lips. Can you guess what it was?"

Noval stared at her blankly.

"It was the king's niece," Nerra went on, ignoring his glare, "a small girl of four with, I am told, delightful blond curls. She was playing with her dollhouse when Valoris chanced upon her in the palace."

She hesitated. "How can I explain this? You have to imagine the scene. Imagine the general, a savvy man, not unused to brutality, who knows what needs to be done. But he is also an educated man, far from being a simple monster. Not only has he murdered the king and queen, but he has ran his sword through many relatives, men, women, children. Yes, there were children among them."

"Every decent part of him cried out in horror, revolted at what he was doing. And yet he pressed on until he was finished, until he could finally breathe a sigh of relief. The task had been completed. The coup was over and he would be free now - free to take over the business of governing. There was so much to do."

"Or so he thought. Then he runs into this adorable child with her big brown eyes who looks at him innocently and trembles."

Nerra paused for effect. Noval did not seem as disinterested as he did when she started, though he kept on glaring at her maliciously.

"Well, he hadn't the heart to do it. The story goes that he raised his sword but could not bring it down. He passed the girl on to one of his servants with instructions to smuggle her off-world, to give her to an orphanage on a distant planet under an assumed name. He thought the girl would be as good as dead."

"But events took an an all too predictable form. Valoris' deception was revealed in some years time. The servant to whom he had entrusted the girl had, on his deathbed, revealed the secret to his wife, who in turn told others. Plenty supporters of the monarchy remained, for there were many whose fortunes were diminished under the new regime."

"It was not easy to find the girl, for records were not widely kept at that time and reconstructing the servant's journey across the galaxy required much guesswork. And yet, a few decades later, the girl was found after all. The old monarchists filled her head with enchanting fairy tales, stories of how she could be queen. The girl eventually mounted a challenge to the parliamentary system Valoris set up, backed by disgruntled supporters of the old regime and foreign powers eager to sow seeds of conflict."

"I was born ninety years after Valoris spared her, by which time both Valoris and the girl were long dead. And yet the planet had been mired in a civil war for decades. The conflict they started outlived them both. Can you guess how it ended?"

Noval shrugged.

"Once again, events took an all too predictable turn. The two sides fought each other viciously. When the planet had exhausted itself, a neighboring system conquered us with little resistance. Many had even welcomed the invaders. They turned out to be harsh tyrants, indeed - but we would find that out much later, when there was little that could be done about it. At the time, most people were simply glad the fighting seemed to be over. "

"Our culture and language were obliterated," Nerra continued, a note of desperation creeping into her voice, "Our planet was assimilated into the empire our invaders were building. Our distinctiveness disappeared, just like that of the countless planets out there where cultures are born and die out as the galaxy twists and turns in perpetual warfare."

She paused. "Do you understand what I am trying to tell you?"

The question caught Noval by surprise. "It is obvious enough," he sighed. "You seek to justify the murder I have committed."

"To kill a child is wrong. Normally." She put strong emphasis on the last word. "But that kind of thinking is inapplicable when you make decisions that pivot the world. When Valoris failed to kill that girl, he committed a supremely immoral act. Perhaps the most immoral act in the history of my world."

"He made an inaccurate calculation," Noval said, furrowing his brow. "What if he was able to hide the girl successfully?"

"If there was the smallest chance his deception would be found out, he should not have done it. When you play with the fate of worlds - when your acts determine whether your culture will preserved or swallowed up - there is no room for these kinds of gambles, not for the sake of one child."

Noval said nothing to this.

"I passed your test," he said finally. "What now? What was it all for?"

"Need you ask?" She raised her eyebrows. "Peace in the galaxy, of course. One step at a time."

"I know you lost someone you were beginning to care about," she continued, seeming to hesitate slightly, "but great goals require fitting sacrifices. Use this experience, learn from it, make the grief a part of yourself. I tell you, it will make you stronger."

"What is your plan?" Noval asked glumly. "How exactly do you imagine I will bring peace to the galaxy? I tire of your stalling."

"Then," Nerra said, "I will tell you. There will be no more secrets between us. We shall be as master and apprentice."

**4.**

"Let us start with the easier part," Nerra began, smiling for the first time. "The galaxy must be unified under one rule. The nature of that rule is of secondary importance. We could do far worse than set up an empire with yourself as emperor."

Noval let the suggestion pass without comment. It sounded silly to even consider it.

"You think accomplishing this will be easy?" he asked incredulously.

"_Easier_, padawan. I am certain we will accomplish the empire stuff without too much difficulty if we only put our minds to it. No, the true difficulty lies elsewhere."

"And where is that?"

Nerra looked at him contemplatively. "Tell me, padawan: do you think peace is possible while Sith are at large?"

"Doubtful. It goes without saying we must eradicate any Sith present in the galaxy."

"Do you think that will be easy?" Nerra asked condescendingly. "The Sith tradition is perpetuated via holocrons, hidden among the far corners of the galaxy. Every Sith lord makes one. These holocrons have a habit of being found by those who can learn from them."

With some amusement, she watched as he processed her statements.

"Oh, worry not, have I not already told you that I am not Sith? I tire of repeating myself. What I am getting at is this: how do you propose to find and destroy these holocrons? The Jedi order has been at this for millenia, you know."

"I don't know," Noval said. "Perhaps some way of locating them can be found? Something unknown to the Jedi?"

"Perhaps," she said in a tone that suggested she knew more than she let on, "though it sounds a bit like wishful thinking, does it not?"

"In any case," she continued, "let us drop that matter as well, for there is a greater obstacle still. I put to you - as long as there are Jedi, there will be Sith."

Noval furrowed his brow. "Is that really true?"

"Of course it is. Do you imagine it coincidence that so many Sith are former Jedi? Did you know that there have been dozens of Jedi splinter groups which developed some variant of the Sith philosophy?"

Noval shook his head.

"It is not something the order likes to advertise. I was a historian, back in my time, and I was at my post many years I before I was deemed trustworthy enough to know this. And is it any wonder?"

Her voice took on a condescending inflection again.

"The Jedi path is not an easy one. Many will find themselves barely human after decades of suppressing all worldly attachments. I assure you it does not take much to...twist them in a new direction. "

"Then," Noval said thoughtfully, "you propose we exterminate the Jedi?"

"In a manner of speaking. I propose something more radical." She paused. "Can you guess?"

"Not really, no."

"I put to you: as long as the force exists, the Jedi will exist."

"Not necessarily," Noval decided this was a good moment to play the devil's advocate. "Suppose that the order was destroyed, along with all records of its philosophy..."

"It would be reborn soon enough. One grows strong in the force either through self-abnegation and discipline or via paroxysms of rage. That is a fact about our universe and one that cannot be changed. We can no more hide the Jedi philosophy than we can erase the stars from the sky."

"This simple fact about the force," she went on, sounding passionate for the first time, "binds our universe to perpetual conflict. The two factions which control the force in such opposite ways will always be at odds. Neither faction has ever prevailed for long.''

"Then I take it," Noval smiled, "you want to destroy the force itself?"

But Nerra looked at him without any trace of amusement.

"Yes, padawan," she said wistfully, "that is exactly what I wish."

**5.**

"You can't be serious."

"Can't I?"

"But... you use the force yourself," Noval said skeptically.

"I use it as I would use a poison, in the hopes of understanding it. I wield it, but it uses us all, and that is revolting to me."

"Are you really so certain it uses us?" Noval persisted. "I am surprised to hear that coming from you. It is usually the Jedi who blabber on about the will of the force."

"It has a will," Nerra said firmly, "a malignant one. That is no article of faith."

"Think of all the coincidences," she continued, "the utterly improbable events that cause galactic politics to twist and turn whenever the state of the galaxy seems to settle down a bit."

"Think of all it took to bring _you_ to this point. You finding me on Nar Mantell, before any of your masters did, and being the rare sort of initiate receptive to my teachings. Running into that girl on your night in the cantina, and what she told you about inevitable failure of the negotiations. Insights that gelled with what you had observed on your own and led to the... solution you put in motion."

"Nicely done, by the way." She looked at him with palpable pride. "You are truly my padawan."

She paused before returning to her theme. "You have been steered onto a path designed to bring you into conflict with the order. A path that I am proposing we hijack.''

"I imagined you had engineered some of those coincidences."

She laughed. "You must think me powerful indeed, to make such things happen from the confines of my little prison."

"But if the force arranged all this…" Noval was thinking out loud, "...is it not madness to try to destroy it? We will not get very far against an enemy as powerful as that."

"A valid point," Nerra said. "Indeed, we may not. But nonetheless we must try. For what it's worth, I see no evidence that the force is intelligent, that it has any desire for self-preservation. I see only instinct, reaction."

"When the Jedi predominate, the force ensures that some poor soul comes across a Sith holocron and grows powerful enough to challenge the supremacy of the order. When the Sith rule, chance coincidences bring success to the Jedi. That is the way it has always been. Is it intelligence or instinct?"

"We shall find out," she said, "when we attempt to destroy it. It is the galaxy's only way out of the cycle of conflict."

"Is such a thing even possible?" Noval was still astonished. "How would we go about destroying the force?"

"I will tell you soon enough," Nerra said. "I do not know for certain, but have guesses, conjectures at how it might be done."

Noval let that pass by. "Even so," he persisted, "it seems like quite the desperate plan. To slaughter all Jedi and then to kill the force itself..."

"We need not slaughter all Jedi, at least not literally. Once the force has ceased to be, they will be powerless. Of course, so will we, and we will need to plan carefully for it."

"In any case," she said patiently, "if you have any better ideas by means of which peace in the galaxy might be effected, please, I am happy to hear them."

He said nothing for a while.

"It is as I thought," she smiled to herself. "It would be something of an understatement to say I've had a lot of time to think things through."

"Perhaps we can strengthen the Republic..." Noval began.

"Bah," she interrupted. "The Republic is a stagnant beast that labors for breath and has for centuries. But that is beside the point. If it is truly the force that causes strife in the galaxy, nothing will be achieved by supporting one faction or the other."

He lapsed into silence again.

"You need not go through with this, you know. I will say it again: you can simply throw me down the nearest trash chute. You need not continue with the order either. I'm sure you can have a perfectly happy life as a farmer or a dentist."

"But if you are serious about bringing peace - " she started to say something before changing tack in mid-sentence. "I know you have sacrificed someone recently, not of your own will, but still you mourn her passing. You will be called to take many more lives if we are to have any chance of success. And our victory is the most important thing of all, worthy of all the sacrifices we will be called to make."

Noval breathed in uneasily. Warnings of inevitable massacres did not sit well with him; and yet, in the wake of Eeso's death, his feelings of outrage were a shell of what they might have once been. Still, he did not like the self-assured way Nerra had said all this, as if she were revealing an inevitable truth to someone who had not been bright enough to discover it on his own. He searched for something to say that would put her off-balance.

"Shall I view you as disposable, then?"

But this did not have the anticipated effect. "Ah," she said, and her voice unmistakably tinged with pleasure, "now you are learning."


	10. Something ends, something begins

Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians, provided the end be their improvement, and the means justified by actually effecting that end. Liberty, as a principle, has no application to any state of things anterior to the time when mankind have become capable of being improved by free and equal discussion. Until then, there is nothing for them but implicit obedience to an Akbar or a Charlemagne, if they are so fortunate as to find one. But as soon as mankind have attained the capacity of being guided to their own improvement by conviction or persuasion (a period long since reached in all nations with whom we need here concern ourselves), compulsion, either in the direct form or in that of pains and penalties for non-compliance, is no longer admissible as a means to their own good, and justifiable only for the security of others.

John Stuart Mill, from _On Liberty._

**1.**

"I am terribly sorry," Dr. Irokini said, pushing a stray lekku out of his eyes. "I fear I may have misheard you."

The young man repeated himself. "I would like you to sever my optic nerve and remove as many of the stem cells from its base as you can."

"But that would leave you blind," the doctor said slowly. "Permanently."

"It would," his patient readily agreed.

Dr. Irokini took a closer look at the boy. He seemed reasonably well put together, somewhat disheveled but not any more than might be expected for a member of his generation. Was he insane or simply an idiot?

"Without the optic nerve," he said patiently, "the connection between your eyes and your brain would disappear. You would see only darkness when you opened your eyes. Without the stem cells, the nerve would never regenerate. The change would be irreversible."

The young man nodded. "I understand, doctor. All the same, I would like to have this operation as soon as possible. "

Dr. Irokini sighed to himself. Though the boy might be insane, he displayed none of the obvious signs, no foaming at the mouth or eyes darting rapidly from corner to corner. Was there was a recent fashion of self-mutilation among humans? What a confused world we live in, he thought mournfully.

"Why would you….?" the doctor began before checking himself. His specialty was surgery not therapy. There was no point in probing further. "Need I inform you that I refuse? I will give you a referral to someone who will talk this through with you." He reached for his prescription chit.

"Won't you reconsider, doctor?" the boy asked.

"No…" Dr. Irokini started to say something when he suddenly felt himself overcome with doubt.

Who was he, after all, to say what was right and wrong? If blindness was what this man wanted, why should he not oblige? Didn't his patient have the right to decide for himself how his life would be lived?

The doctor rubbed his eyes. It was a strange feeling: the complete certainty he felt only moments ago seems to have vanished. It was unprecedented to do what the boy asked. But he was there to help people. Given that his patient was not insane, wasn't it best to defer to the boy's own judgement about what was best?

"I swore an oath to do no harm," he said firmly.

The boy nodded. "You would be doing me no harm, I assure you."

In some twisted way, there was sense to the request. Wasn't the world a dismal place? Images from his own life ran over him. He had always thought of himself as a successful and happy man, with a steady, well-paying job and an attractive mate. But now he felt that his existence had been a disappointment, that whatever potential had lain within him was not unlocked. There was something more to life, though he could not say what it was, and he had failed to discover it. Who could blame the boy for wanting to shut out as much as he could?

He hesitated. "The board of overseers would never approve…"

"Of course," the boy said. "You will need to submit a diagnosis which justifies this drastic procedure." He gave the doctor a half-smile. "A small deception but all for the greater good. I will leave the details to you."

Dr. Irokini nodded. "But..." he began to verbalize a question - or perhaps it was a statement - when he realized he had no idea what to say next. Glancing around mutely for a few moments, he reached for his calendar and looked at the schedule of upcoming surgeries.

"As soon as possible, doctor," said the boy.

**2.**

"I am ready to take the trials, master," Krava said, putting as much confidence into her words as she could muster.

"Are you indeed?" Master Nimbo's tone was skeptical. His eyes narrowed as he looked her up and down.

She struggled to keep her voice from faltering. "I have been your loyal padawan for over a decade and have learned many things. But it is time for me to start on my own journey."

The master said nothing and in the ensuing silence Krava wondered what was going through his mind. She had applied herself with tireless energy from the day Nimbo took her on. How many of her classmates had become knights, while she remained a padawan? She could not see what it was that she lacked. Surely the master could see the effort she had put into her work, her dedication and commitment? She was always first to arrive at their training sessions and the last one to depart. Her mastery with the saber was matched only by the master himself.

The silence stretched out into minutes.

"I sense turmoil within you," Nimbo said finally. "Only a speck, but it is there."

He paused. "You need more time, padawan."

"How much more, master?"

He shrugged. "You should know better than to ask. Until you find yourself in harmony with the Jedi teachings. There is no other answer."

"In the meantime," he continued without enthusiasm, "it will not hurt to keep practicing your forms. Hone your craft. You are on the path, though I know not how long it will take."

He gave her a curt nod, indicating the conversation was over. She bowed and left the room.

It was not the first time the two of them had this conversation and it always ran along the same course. Each time he had said she was not ready. Was it really true, she asked herself, was there really turmoil within her?

Perhaps, she grudgingly admitted, though any lack of peace within her was probably due to remaining a padawan this late into her life. She thought again of her classmates at the academy who were now knights. Were they really more attuned to the Jedi teachings than she was? She dreaded meeting them, which she occasionally did on trips back to Dantooine or Coruscant, she hated the pitying looks they seemed to cast in her direction.

She would double her resolve, she decided, just as she had the previous times her master had denied her. She would lose herself in the work, make her previous efforts seem lazy by comparison. When she finally achieved her due, it would be all the more meaningful for having passed the high bar her master had set.

With new determination she set off for battle practice, now almost an hour early. She would normally indulge herself during this time, either reading a novel or taking a walk in the temple gardens; but that did not seem right any longer. Though the hall they used for training would be empty, she would practice her stances alone until the rest of the padawans joined her. There was hardly any time to lose.

**3.**

Noval had imagined that perceiving the world through the force alone would be akin to the exercises he had done as an initiate, when, blindfolded, he had to name the objects which were put in front of him one-by-one. He could not have been more wrong. He had never realized just how many of the things around him were instantly and effortlessly resolved by his field of vision. Now every piece of litter tumbling down the street - every stray leaf - every tree branch shaking in the wind - all had to be sensed and combined at once into one mental picture.

It was too much. He tried it when he first woke up after his surgery but even a minute of it proved exhausting. But the alternative - the pure darkness he saw now regardless of whether his eyes were open or shut - left him terrified. Eventually, he hit on an acceptable compromise: he narrowed his field of sensing, focusing on objects one a time, choosing whatever was directly in front of him. It was a bit like aimlessly groping your way with your hands. Walking felt akin to moving through a dark cellar; he would tentatively put one foot in front of the other while he flailed around with the force, desperately trying to sense enough of his surroundings to make the next step without stumbling.

Even that turned out to be debilitating soon enough. He had arranged to get himself discharged from the hospital that very day - Dr. Irokini had thrown a fit and needed some convincing, though that turned out to be no more difficult than the last time the Twilek needed a nudge in the right direction - and he was now walking down a busy avenue, pedestrians all around him, a busy stream of hovercars zooming by a few paces over. He had been on his feet for a half-hour at the most and already he felt deathly tired. Sensing a bench nearby, he made his way towards it - even those half-a-dozen paces now felt like agony - and collapsed onto it.

The thought of spending the rest of his days like this was horrible beyond imagining. Would he ever see a human face again? Some possibility remained of regaining his sight one day; though the doctor had said it was impossible, he gleaned knowledge of some experimental procedures from his mind, untested and full of promise. Still, it was equally likely that no such procedure would work. He thought of Eeso, then of Reena, trying to picture their faces in all the details, with every curve and every stray hair. Years from now, would he even remember what they looked like?

Yet this was the only way, or so Nerra had convinced him. This was how he would become strong in the force, by giving himself no choice but to rely on it at all times. He was straining himself more than ever and that was a good thing. He would flounder and suffer but he would also learn and grow.

He had come to accept that he was no more adept in the force than the best of the Jedi, nor cleverer than they. It was a realization that would have been difficult for him only a year ago, when he felt it necessary to believe he was special in some indefinable way; now he accepted it easily without question. The only thing that set him apart was a willingness to consider possibilities the Jedi refused.

Moving the galaxy would not come without pain. That was the lesson he chose to learn from the recent past, the lesson that spurred him on now. It was all well and good to say he wanted to bring peace to the galaxy; such ambitions were even considered fashionable among initiates. But few of those who said so thought seriously of what it would really take. Eventually, the dream of peace seemed to recede into the distance as initiates became padawans and then knights, acting to reinforce the importance of the order but never seeming to get any closer to reality. Whereas he was intent on taking the dream seriously; and if he was to be the one to bring peace to the galaxy, he would need power, a great deal of it. More than that, he would need the resolve to do what was necessary.

He regretted now his moment of weakness, that instant when he had sought to disable the explosive and undo the plan he had so painstakingly put in motion. It was a foolish lapse, a betrayal of his path, of himself. "Only human," Nerra had said of it and told him to dismiss it from his thoughts. But he could not; if Eeso had turned out to be a necessary sacrifice on the path to his goal, what he was going through now was nothing, was barely worth mentioning.

He rested for a few more moments, forcing all thoughts out of his mind and taking pleasure in the resulting stillness. Eventually, he felt within himself the power to walk an additional block or so. Time was pressing: though he was thankfully alone now, away from his master who was still attending to the final negotiations between Ulth and Plessians, they would be reunited in only a few weeks time. By then he would need to appear the same as ever: not only would he need to learn walking, he would need to be able to move his eyeballs in tune with normal conversation. Perhaps the biggest hurdle would be to bring his lightsaber skills to what they used to be; anything less would arouse suspicion. He rose from the bench and, pushing through the exhaustion and pain, began to make his way down the street.

**4.**

The repetitiveness of the work had started to put her into something resembling a trance. Examine; label; record; categorize; shelve. When she had first arrived here, many months ago, she would not last more than a few minutes at it before her mind wandered away. She had grown much since. Now she was in the habit of going entire days between stray impulses of any kind. It was almost as if she lost herself in the task; her sense of self withered into nothingness and there was in peace in the resulting quietness, a sense of harmony with the world around her.

Reena knew her life might seem horribly dull to many; she might have said so herself only a year ago. An early rise with the morning sun, followed by an hour or two of light meditation; then the labor of digging would begin, in which she would partake until her body exhausted itself; a light meal, followed by a longer, more substantive meditation, and finally an evening spent cataloguing the finds. She kept a few of the classic texts beside her bed and once the work was over she would leaf through them until she drifted off to sleep, the books slumping onto her chest.

What sustained her, day after day, was an understanding of the importance of the work they were doing. It was imperative to visit the worlds where the Sith had once ruled, to find their artifacts and destroy them. The masters had often said those things had minds of their own. Because of their work in the here and now, one day the Sith would be uprooted and the galaxy would finally be at rest.

Her mastery of the force grew rapidly, along with her understanding of the Jedi doctrine. For the first time, she felt she was coming to understand the ancient texts; passages that would have left her mystified only months ago now seemed perfectly clear.

She shelved the latest find - a fragment of parchment with some unknown writing scribbled on top of it, dated eight to nine centuries before the present - and, walking over to the next batch, contemplated the passages she encountered on the previous evening.

_``...voidness is at the true nature of thy feelings, and before which thine intellect shines; in that state, which is experienced with unbearable intensity, voidness and brightness are inseparable - the voidness bright by nature and brightness void - a state of primordial intellect whose power, unobstructed, radiates...''_

"_...the path is without difficulty; just avoid picking and choosing...''_

"_...from the cessation of clinging comes the cessation of becoming..."_

The key was to treat the words with care and longing, to turn them over within her soul. She ruminated on reading each night and by morning the words grew within her almost as if a seed had been planted. Her error had always been to analyze them analytically, to square off possible meanings against each other. The words of the masters were beyond logic, were more fundamental than reasoning.

Her path to these insights had not been an easy one.

On one of her first days at the dig site, Master Shayn noticed her admiring a clay figurine. It was about half the length of her elbow, in the shape of a woman, made out of bright red brittle clay. She paid it no special heed when she first discovered it. It was only after she had scraped off a bit of clay from the side to date it and saw the result - over two hundred thousand years before the present - that she felt awe and astonishment. It was a fragment of an old civilization, now altogether lost, one that predated almost everything they knew about the history of the galaxy.

She found herself drawn to it. From time to time she retrieved it out of storage and held it before her. It was beautiful in a way, but it was more than merely that; the clay woman was half-kneeling on one knee and the figure seemed to suggest a story of some sort, one that could no longer be divined. Was she a supplicant stopping before a ruler? Did she act out some sort of ritual? Or was her kneel in jest, for Reena though she could see an unmistakable gaiety hidden in the wrinkles around those eyes?

She wondered who it was that scooped the clay and molded it, so very long ago. Whoever it was, though long dead, the two of them had shared something, improbably, separated as they were by eons of time.

"You are well-aware, I'm sure," Master Shayn said one day, when he noticed her admiring the figure, "that the Jedi frown upon attachment." He walked over and took it in his hands. "Attachment is close to greed and leads to fear of loss, and fear is the path to the dark side. It is a teaching that every padawan must learn before becoming a Jedi knight."

He looked at her searchingly to see if she had understood what he was trying to convey. Whatever he had seen in her face left him unsatisfied for, to Reena's horror, he took the figure and threw it with full force upon the ground. The brittle clay broke into thousands of small pieces.

"Do you now understand me, padawan?" He looked at Reena calmly, as if daring her to challenge him.

She nodded wordlessly. It was all she could to stop herself from bursting into tears.

"Clean it up…" he gestured to the corpuscles of red clay on the ground "... and make sure to record it as _destroyed_ in our catalogues."

He said all this evenly, as if the two of them were discussing what to have for breakfast.

She could barely sleep that night. She lay awake in a blind rage against her master, against all Jedi, against the galaxy. There was a certain inhumanity to the order, a unimodal way of looking at the universe. It was maddening to imagine the figurine surviving for hundreds of thousands of years, only to meet an end as part of her lesson on attachment.

So strong were her emotions that, when morning came, she felt mildly horrified at the hatred that was coursing through her. There was something terrifying about her anger. She was suddenly disgusted by her willingness, however brief, to imagine horrible things befalling her master in a moment of righteous rage.

"Remember," Master Shayn said the following afternoon when he ran across her at the dig site. "Your master is your best friend and also your worst enemy."

Her animosity dissipated over the following days. Wasn't her master right? Attachments were dangerous, big or small. The figurine was beautiful but it was only dust, a transient thing that will disappear like all else. The path of the Jedi was not an easy one. She had made sacrifices already and would have to make more.

"You have great potential, Reena," Master Shayn said to her one evening, as the two of them sat besides the campfire, a few days hence. Though he had not mentioned the figurine, both of them understood what had prompted this praise. "You have it in you to be a great Jedi, someone who adds new chapters to our teachings. I can see it inside of you. I do not wish to see you squander that gift. "

Neither of them had brought up the subject again.

Weeks had grown into months, all spent digging, cataloguing, meditating. She felt herself stronger in the force each day. She even found herself somewhat disappointed when a group of initiates from the academy arrived to aid them. She had grown used to the silence that reigned between her and master Shayn. It was a rich, communicative silence and it was broken now by the constant chatter coming from the students. It was only their first year at the academy. She knew that, one day, she had been just like them, though that felt like ages ago now.

The initiates themselves tested her patience - though perhaps that was a good thing. On one of the days after their arrival, she heard one of them make some irreverant crack about Master Shayn's appearance. The remark itself, neither amusing nor clever, did not sting her; but she was the most senior among them and it was her duty to deliver a rebuke. She walked up coolly to the boy who said it, noticing with satisfaction the awkward silence he lapsed into, along with his companions, as they saw her approach them. She would waste no time with reproofs or remonstrations; what they needed was something that would remind them of who they were and the path they were on.

"One day you will die," she said, looking the boy intently in the eyes. "And then you will be forgotten."

As she left, she saw with satisfaction they were looking in her direction in stunned and confused silence. She knew her rebuke was confusing but perhaps, one day, the words would find a way into the boy's soul.

When a letter from Noval came through the holonets in one of the following days, she caught herself feeling elated. Before she even glanced at its opening lines, as she ran her hands over the thick parchment on which the message was printed out, she found herself recalling their first days at the Jedi temple, when she roamed its halls alongside her new friends. She remembered wonderful days of freedom, the sense of boundless possibilities open before her.

It was a dangerous feeling, she realized for the first time, seemingly harmless and innocent, yet it could hold her back and bind her to the morass of the world. Already, clutching at the parchment, she felt a contraction of the heart, a sadness at the possibilities falling by the wayside. She put the letter away. She would take a few days to center herself and read it afterwards.

She was not the same person she used to be and her reply would reflect that. Her past would always be a part of her, but it was futile to reprise it. It was gone, irreversibly. She remembered the passage from the previous day, ``...the path is without difficulty: just avoid picking and choosing...'' and found its meaning clear as day.

**5.**

The controlled swings which dominated the start of their bout had given way to wild and far-reaching thrusts and Krava was beginning to find herself at a disadvantage. The rules decreed that a step outside the training mat would result in a loss and her feet were now only a footlength away from a corner. She pretended to swing hard to her left, thinking that Noval's parry would leave her with room to jump to surer footing; but he was not fooled, easily blocking the weak stab of her saber, and starting a counterattack which brought her even closer to the edge.

Paradoxically, his saber skills seemed to have improved during his month of absence. Although Noval had been the best swordsman in his class at the academy, so was she; that tournament that Noval had so unexpectedly won in his last year, when he had caught the master's attention - Krava had won it in each of her final three years. When he had first joined the cohort of padawans the master kept about him, she could defeat him easily.

No longer. A month ago, the master had sent him back to Coruscant with a message to the council bearing his speculations on the rise of the Sith; he had not trusted his thoughts to transmission over the holonets, but instead stored them in a capsule for Noval to hand over. It was to be a relatively short trip. But an unexpected trade embargo made travel difficult and delayed his return. Now he was back and while in some ways he was still the same - still quiet and shy, with an informal tone that endeared him to her and which set him apart from the rest of the other padawans - he seemed a little more withdrawn. There was something strange in the way he looked at her as they spoke, something different that she couldn't quite put her finger on.

He was also a much better swordsman. Krava had never seen him devote much attention to the saber. He was always among the last to arrive for their training sessions and the first to leave, and he often had fairly thin excuses for skipping training entirely. Inexplicably, he was now more than a match for her, somewhat astonishing given that she was more than a decade older and had far more time to hone her skills.

She felt herself losing ground each time their sabers crossed, slowly herded into a corner. Though she was fully focused on the bout, she was also uncomfortably aware that the master himself was standing nearby, having paused his slow amble through the hall they to see how their match would play out. She needed something drastic, something that would stave off defeat.

She put her right foot forward, and brought her saber down hard; he blocked her, just as she anticipated, and then she lunged to his left, physically diving onto the mat in an attempt to surprise him, swinging her saber at his leg as she fell. It was a desperate move and one with a fairly small chance of succeeding, and yet, unexpectedly, it worked; her saber had grazed his leg just before he brought his own saber down upon her.

She did her best to catch her breath quietly and bowed as she rose, trying to hide the relief on her face. Noval bowed back, seemingly taking his loss without much disappointment. The crisis had been averted. Losing to the master's youngest padawan, in front of everyone, would have been quite the embarrassment.

But her thoughts quickly turned from relief to anxiety as she realized that she would not catch Noval off-guard the same way again. His skill with the saber would soon surpass her own - perhaps it already had? - and when the master would see Noval defeat her, his estimation of her would decrease. She sighed inwardly. She could only hope that, however things worked out, she would not remain a padawan forever.

**6.**

After dismissing the students with the wave of a hand, he motioned for Noval to stay behind. When only the two of them remained, he sat cross-legged on the edge of the mat and put a pebble on the ground between them.

It was an invitation to a contest of wills, the Jedi version of arm-wrestling. One of them would seek to levitate the pebble and the other would push it down. Such contests were a common way to pass the time among the initiates in the academy. Noval, being the more junior, was entitled to the easier downward direction.

Seeing that his padawan was ready, Nimbo began to concentrate, starting off lightly; he wanted to pinpoint the exact moment when he would overcome Noval's resistance. He gently increased the strength of his push as he felt the countervailing force his padawan was producing. He had expected Noval to give way any moment and yet the pebble stubbornly stayed on the ground and Noval showed no visible sign of strain.

He began pushing with most of his strength and the pebble started wobbling, then rose a finger's length into the air. But his advantage was only momentary: his student redoubled his efforts and the pebble began to drift downwards.

He pushed now with all his might, throwing himself into the contest with ferocity. For too long, nothing seemed to happen; finally, when he was more than halfway to exhausting his strength, the pebble began ascending, slowly at first, then faster as he felt Noval's resistance giving way.

They both stopped simultaneously once it had risen above them.

Nimbo snatched the pebble from the air and, sliding it into his pocket, rose and walked to look out the bay window behind them. The padawan was good. It had been decades since anyone had been able to seriously challenge him like this. He took in the view of the city, peaceful, quiet, and yet always reminding him of the Sith danger lurking beneath. Finally, he turned his attention back to Noval.

"You lost your fights today on purpose. "

It was a statement, not a question. He saw the boy nod hesitantly.

"Explain yourself, padawan."

Noval seemed to waver for a few moments before speaking.

"Master, a victory would have only provoked conflict between myself and Krava. I seek to learn as much as I can from my bouts; win or lose, it does not matter."

Nimbo nodded, satisfied.

"You are strong in the force," he said, turning to face the boy.

He had meant to stop there. His plan was to give the padawan some light encouragement and send him on his way. Yet, in spite of himself, he continued.

"You have already surpassed my oldest padawan with the saber. One day, you may even surpass me."

"I had to use all of my willpower to levitate that pebble," he went on, unable to stop. "It is shocking that you were able to match me for as long as you did."

He paused as he ran his senses over the boy in front of him. "I see no trace of conflict within you. You are well on your way to becoming a Jedi."

He had not meant to say any of this but it was all unquestionably true. Still, he would have done better to keep his mouth shut. Showering your padawans with praise tended to diminish their drive. Why had he said it? He searched his mind uncertainly. There was only one logical outcome of the speech he was giving, and, after a few moments, he plunged forward.

"I believe you are ready to take the trials," he said, "though you have been with me for less than a year. I am certain the other masters will appreciate how far along you are."

"Nevertheless," he said thoughtfully, "I fear becoming a knight too quickly will fly in the face of the more traditionally minded members of the council. Let us wait…" he paused to do a calculation "...a year, give or take. Then you will have been my padawan for a little over two years. Quick, certainly, but not unheard of."

Noval nodded, the expression on his face unchanging. There was a certain monotony to his stare. Nimbo found himself wondering at the boy's muted reaction; his previous padawans had nearly leapt for joy upon hearing this news.

"I am happy you think so highly of my efforts, master. Naturally, I defer to your wisdom in such things. I can only say I will endeavor not to disappoint you."

After a pause, his padawan continued awkwardly. "We know now the Sith are well alive in the galaxy. It is a great honor to know I have your confidence, master, given all the trials Jedi knights are likely to undergo."

Nimbo nodded with satisfaction. Suddenly finding himself with nothing to say, he dismissed the padawan.

Once alone, he turned back to look at the city sprawled out before him. The view did little to quell his unease. He had not intended to say any of the things that had come out of his mouth. Was he growing impulsive in his old age?

Still, Noval _was_ quite advanced for his age and he was not sure that he had much to teach the boy. Not only did his padawan master the force to an unusual degree for one so young, he was a walking example of Jedi virtues. Losing his fights on purpose was but one example. Two years was a short time but not outlandishly so. Others had become Jedi knights in less. He wondered briefly how Krava would react if Noval were to become a knight while she was still a padawan before dismissing the thought. It was unseemly for a Jedi to covet. If Krava could not master her jealousy, she did not belong in the order.

Something the boy had said stuck in his mind and he found himself returning to it. _The trials Jedi knights are likely to undergo_. He understood well enough what was meant. The Sith had always seen fit to recruit wayward Jedi, usually capturing them and breaking their spirits through torture. There was some mystery over what, exactly, they did to their captives; but the husks that emerged when the process was finished were shadows of their former selves and served the dark side. It would take someone of strong mind to resist successfully.

He followed the thought to its natural conclusion. If the Sith were truly alive in the galaxy, the order would need to produce significantly fewer Jedi. There was little room for error now; he ran over his cohort of padawans and thought of several - Wrasho, Krava, others - about whom he was not so certain, who would be easily corrupted by Sith tortures. Too dangerous to let them become Jedi knights now.

Perhaps after everything on this planet was wrapped up with some finality, he would pay a visit to Coruscant. He would put his case to the council. They would need to make the trials considerably harder, even re-examine some of those who passed within the last few decades. They could cull weak-minded Jedi from the order now or they could face them on the field of battle once the Sith had corrupted them. Which was the better choice?

The more he thought of it, the more he grew convinced of the urgency of the matter. He could think of nothing else as important as this. In fact, he suddenly decided, he would short his stay on the planet. The Ulth and Plessians could take care of themselves now. He would set off to Coruscant on the next available shuttle.

He was certain the council would listen to him, though naturally there would be some resistance to overcome. There was much conservatism in the order, much unseemly clinging to tradition. But, in the end, they had little choice. After all, he thought, could the council really ignore the man who ended the last Sith menace, the single Jedi who was apparently so threatening to the dark side that the Sith revealed their presence for a chance to kill him?

**7.**

Uneasiness welled within her soul. She stood by the window and watched as her ship dropped out of hyperspace and settled into orbit with the other vessels bound for the Corellian star port, and all the while it was as if a thorn was prickling at her side. Reena pushed it away, meditated, focused her mind on other things, but it was still there, waiting just outside the range of her consciousness.

At last, seeing as she had no choice, she confronted the issue head-on. She was, finally, able to visit her mother.

She had sworn an oath, long ago when the order took her from her family, that she would find her mother once she had become a Jedi. That oath, contrary to the Jedi teachings as it was, had always been a source of nourishment for her. She had never truly felt the pain of separation from her family, at least not in the same way as the rest of the initiates at the academy. What, in the end, were a few short years?

Reena quickly did the calculation. She had handed over the artifacts from the dig site to the archivist on Dantooine not one week ago. That meant she was scheduled to rendezvous with Master Shayn in a little over three weeks. Flight times across the galaxy were unpredictable and no one would consider it out of the ordinary if her arrival was delayed. She could board a different ship here on Corellia, visit her mother for a week or so, and rendezvous with master Shayn only a few days late. None would be the wiser.

On some level, she had been aware of the possibility for weeks and had worked hard to push it out of her mind; and yet here it was, forcing itself into consideration. She felt herself almost shaking with desire.

Calling on her years of training, she let the desire pass through her without judgement. She was a creature of flesh and blood; there was no denying her passions. Conflicting emotions were tearing her apart. She felt a sense of sadness that her mastery of the force was insufficient to prevent herself from being tempted so; but she also felt a sense of paralyzing dread at the thought of losing this opportunity. She had spent so many years longing for it.

It would be so easy. One small change in her flight reservations.

She forced herself to think of an old Jedi parable about the so-called sand mollusks of Hjaff. These snail-like creatures were said to subsist on the oil which accumulated on the top of the deserts of Hjaff, most of it coming from the dirt always tumbling about the dry landscape. Occasionally, a mollusk would encounter a particularly oily patch of sand and burrow far into it, soaking up the oil until it found itself deep inside the earth, too deep to rise to the surface again. Stuck within the sand, it would ultimately perish of hunger.

Her feelings were a trap; once she had indulged them, she would be unable to put them aside, and, in a manner of speaking, she would drown in them much like the mollusks of the parable. Not only would they keep her from becoming the person she ought to be but any reprieve they granted would be temporary. Her mother would, one day, die, her family would turn to dust, and without her Jedi training the pain and grief would consume her.

She pictured her mother's death, her body decomposing in the grave, the corpse overrun with insects, the buzzing noise of flies in the air. She pictured the sense of emptiness coming from the place where her mother's spirit ought to be, nothing but empty flesh and bone and ligament in a state of rot.

Oddly enough, she felt herself fortified by this gruesome image. The desire still burned within her, but she felt in control of it rather than the reverse. She would not change her flight reservations after all. Though parts of her still wavered, she knew herself well enough to know she would persevere. Turning her gaze back to the window and taking in the oceans and clouds of Corellia, she found nothing pricked at her side any longer. It was as if a weight had been lifted from her soul. She felt more at peace with herself, with the universe, than ever.

**8.**

The star port on Anchorhead was nothing like its counterpart on Corellia: cramped, disorganized, with small, woolly aliens constantly dashing about. It was unclear whether there was a particular flurry of excitement just as she arrived or whether this represented the normal state of affairs. The burning suns made it difficult to walk between the outdoor landing pads; between that and the lack of any conspicuous signage, it took her absurdly long to find her shuttle. The locals ignored her polite requests for help, most brushing her off with impatient curses, with the exception of a group of miners who began making obscene gestures the moment she approached them.

Reena felt exhausted by the time she finally found her departure pad. Spending a few hours within a temperature-regulated spaceship would be a very welcome relief. But it was not to be; the Twilek gate agent chuckled the moment he glanced at her ticket.

"You really haven't heard?"

She shook her head.

"Your frigate had a malfunction with the orbital stabilizers," he said cheerfully. "The pilot had to bring it down in the desert, not far from here. Fortunately no one was hurt."

He shook his head, clearly finding it difficult to believe there was anyone on the planet so ignorant as to be unaware of this.

"Not even the sand people?" Reena asked.

"Oh," the Twilek shrugged. "I haven't the slightest idea. I imagine many of them were killed."

Another reminder of the frail nature of the world, she thought, the absurdity of forming attachments to it. She imagined villages of sand people destroyed a crash landing. A small feeling of regret still burned in her like a dull ache and she had made a habit of seeking out such reminders.

Turning her thoughts to the present, she seemed to be facing a considerable inconvenience. Her travel might now be delayed by many months.

"I assume you will find me an alternate route."

"Certainly," the agent scratched one of his lekku and pushed a few buttons on his terminal. "The next intergalactic frigate will visit this sector in six weeks time."

"Six weeks?"

The Twilek nodded.

"What about the ship in the desert? Will it be fixed before then?"

This was met with more chuckles.

"Human, have you any idea how big that thing is? It's planet-sized. It's already fixed, in fact - with brand new orbital stabilizers - but digging it out of the sand will take years.''

"I see," she said icily.

"I'm afraid we don't have the budget to keep you in Anchorhead for six weeks..." The Twilek began to say something but she had already turned aside.

She made her way to the taxi stand outside the starport. In no time she was beset by Jawas, all squawking at her. But when she had made clear her desire to go to the shipwreck, their interest seemed to drop dramatically. In the end, she managed to persuade one of them to take her there and back, for a price that was three or four times as large as it should have been.

She cleared her mind on the trip there, the monotony of the wilderness and the harsh gale on her face lulling her into a state of contentment. The desert was old, and in its own way, it was a repository of all the experiences that were had in it, bounty hunters, sand people, Jawas, miners, all striving, locked in an endless cycle, all part of the force though oblivious to it. Their echoes could be sensed here if one only cared to listen.

She had not truly grasped the scale of the downed frigate until she arrived. Long before they reached it, the ship's shadow obscured sunlight. The vessel itself stretched out as far as the eye could see, jarringly black among the faded yellowness of the landscape. She looked it up on the holo-pad she had brought with her; apparently, the Twilek exaggerated but not substantially so, for the crashed frigate occupied one twentieth of the land area of Tattoine. She ran her force sense over it and felt a piloting crew on deck, felt their idleness, their sense of angry helplessness.

She dismounted from the hovercar, jumping down onto the sand, and fell to one knee as the Jawa looked on in puzzlement. He had been paid to wait for as long as it took the smaller of the suns to do a quarter turn in the sky before ferrying her back. Most likely he judged her to be insane. For a few minutes, she remained motionless. She did her best to concentrate, steadying her spirit, quieting the turmoil within her, tapping into the currents of force swirling about the sand dunes. Finally, she felt herself at one with the planet around her, ancient, cold, unfeeling, a cacophony of lives, each one burning brightly, each unsatisfied, a dissonance of voices, disturbing from one angle and melodious from another.

She opened her eyes and strained herself. The ship rumbled. She pushed against it, feeling the heavy weight of the metal as if it was brushing against her skin and the weight of the steel as if it was pressing on her chest. She pushed harder and felt her stomach constrict and the pain run through her body. She had never tried to draw on so much force before. No one had ever tried to draw on so much force before, at least no master that she knew of.

The ship lurched. She felt suffocated by the amount of force that was coursing through her. It was almost as if the seams of her body were about to give way, as if she was about to burst into a thousand little pieces. She closed her eyes briefly and tried to push the pain away, to overcome it, all without success. No matter. She opened her eyes and prepared for another thrust.

By now the frigate had risen by the length of a fingernail in the air. Pausing for a brief respite, she pushed harder in spite of the agony spreading through her joints. She wished she could stop herself from feeling pain, but that would have lessened her ability to draw on the force. She pushed and pushed and pushed. It felt as if she had died, as if she had become one with the pain. There was nothing to her, no substance, nothing except the sensation of burning agony. The pain was the only thing that was real. She craved for it to stop. She would do anything for it to stop, anything at all. She screamed but no sound came from her lips.

And then suddenly it was all over. The ship had risen halfway to the clouds and she felt the pilots start the engine, the orbital stabilizers kick into motion, and she relaxed, falling to the ground as the world swung back into focus. Behind her, the Jawa was chirping excitedly.

She would make it to Master Shayn's dig site on time after all.

**9.**

What had the master to talk to Noval about? Krava knew the order held a dim view of excessive curiosity, especially regarding the private dealings of the masters. Still, reeling as she was from the master's refusal to let her take the trials, she was able to think of little else.

She could not get rid of a nagging feeling that there was something strange about their bouts that day. She replayed them in her mind. Noval's winning touches had been ruthless and efficient, whereas her own were barely shaved off, either in windfalls of luck or at times when Noval seemed to unexpectedly lose his guard.

Had he lost their fights on purpose?

If so, then why? And had the master noticed it? Was that why he asked Noval to stay behind?

It was a possibility, one mystery among several. How had Noval improved so quickly, especially on a trip across the galaxy when he was supposedly stuck on alien worlds without anyone to spar with?

Perhaps his improvement had come from further enlightenment in the Jedi doctrine. It was a possibility. Maybe he had come to truly understand that the self is nothing, that all is the force, in some inexplicably deeper way than before. But Krava doubted it. Her feelings and desires, the very things the order had told her to suppress, insisted something else must be at play.

She thought of the night before the explosion, when, worried about the fallout from the coming negotiations, she had been unable to sleep and wandered the halls of the temple. It was quiet and sparse building, with few monks to occupy the ample space. As she walked the largely empty hallways, it occurred to her that Noval seemed a touch jittery for the past few days. She would walk by his room and see if he was awake. When she had walked to the upper floors of the temple where he was housed and stood beside his door, she could sense the room on the other side was empty. He must have been wandering the temple just as she was.

She walked the temple corridors many times that night, thinking she would run into him, but she never did.

Her thoughts were following forbidden pathways now, guided by passion and emotion, and she made no effort to stop herself. It was as if her mind was trying to tell her something, some truth that was bubbling up from her subconscious. She put aside her Jedi teachings and simply let it happen.

Who planted the bomb? That question lay at the heart of her unease. No more deflection, she said to herself, no more deferring to her master's supposedly superior wisdom. Could it really have been the Sith?

The bomb had certainly not accomplished any intelligible Sith objective. If anything, the situation on the planet had radically improved following the explosion, and the holonets were full of talk of a wide-scale war that had been averted. Surely, a galactic war would have been good for whatever it was the Sith intended?

Could the bomb have been intended to kill her master? Nimbo was convinced this was the case. But, even though he was quite adept with the saber, Krava could not help but doubt that her master constituted a significant threat to any Sith.

Besides, it was hard to believe that a Sith agent had been really here that night, found a way into the temple, down to the cellars, planted the bomb, and then vanished - all of it without attracting any notice. She knew the ensuing investigations by the Ulth and Plessians had found no hidden passageways anywhere in the temple.

Noval was not in his room that night. She returned to that thought again.

Where was he when she walked the halls of the temple? Why had they not run into each other? It was admittedly, a large temple, but she had walked its corridors for many hours that night.

She thought back to the way he looked in the garden just before the explosion: standing apart all by himself, nervously glancing around with a clenched face. Wasn't there something a little off about him then?

Could Noval be a Sith? She had not sensed anything out of the ordinary from him; but then, who could say what standing next to an actual Sith felt like?

Even if Noval was not Sith, he must have been the one who had planted the bomb. She felt herself hesitate at this conclusion, almost as if she were saying _you do not know this_ to herself. _A Jedi should not reason so_. But her intuition propelled her forwards. She had no proof but it was the explanation that best matched the facts.

What should she do? She could tell her master, but, without more convincing evidence, she had little hope he would confront Noval; more likely, he would ascribe the accusation to lingering resentment on her part and punish her by delaying her graduation date still further. The master had already settled on a version of events, and that version involved a Sith attempt on his life; she knew him well enough to know he would not be budged, not without absolutely convincing proof. Besides, Noval had presumably thought through the possibilities and would be ready with a passable explanation for his whereabouts that night.

She paced the short distance of her room. There was, in fact, only one thing she _could _do. She grasped for the hilt of the saber and turned it over in her hands.

It was time for a rematch.

Once he lay defeated with her saber at his throat, she would wring the truth out of him. Then and only then would she approach her master. Noval was, it seemed, the better swordsman; but she had the element of surprise.

The temple was deserted at this late hour with most of the padawans either asleep or in the midst of their evening meditations. Slowly, mindful that these might well be her last moments of life, she walked up the winding stairs to the top floor of the temple. She encountered no one save a few monks who bowed to her respectfully as she passed.

Noval's door was small and nondescript. Her heart constricted at the thought that she might meet her death on the other side. Taking a deep breath and counseling herself to be brave, she used the force the peer inside.

She felt only a faint presence, almost as if the person in the room was injured. So much for the better! He would be no match for her in this state. She kicked the door open in a single sweeping motion and jumped inside brandishing her saber.

To her surprise, the room was empty.

She reached out and sensed a presence nonetheless, weak, barely at the edge of feeling. It seemed to be coming from a closeted corner, beneath a pile of clothes. Shutting the door, she moved to investigate. A small opening was burrowed within the floor, hidden well-enough to fool the eye but detectable once she concentrated her force sense upon it. She ran her hands over the floor, feeling for any cracks, and when she found one, she slid her nails into the opening and pulled away a crumbling chunk of mortar.

A holocron was neatly pressed inside.

No doubt this was the source of the presence she felt. She held it in her hands; black and sharply angular, it seemed to play off the light in the room. There was something about it that made her marvel, some sense of sleekness or even beauty. Was this Noval's secret, the key to unlocking the anomalies that had puzzled her?

For a brief moment, it felt as if the holocron was speaking to her, though no words were said; it was weaving a tale of promises unfulfilled, hard work unrewarded, petty and narrow-minded men who stymied good will. She blinked rapidly and the feeling passed. What had just happened? But she had little time to think it over, for the holocron started growing warm to the touch and the top of the little pyramid began to radiate bright red rays, rays that were already coalescing into a figure.

* * *

_Author's note: this is the final chapter, though I am planning to write a sequel to this story eventually. If you've read this far, I'd very much appreciate it if you reviewed it at (click through and scroll to the bottom of page). _


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